By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria has expressed appreciation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over its recent voluntary reduction in its crude oil production.
This was made known by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, in a statement released and sighted by Business Post on Friday.
The world’s largest exporter and de-facto leader of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) recently took a decision to reduce its production by one million barrels per day from next month in order to support the slump in oil demand that had brought the price of crude oil to a devastating low.
The cut was in addition to the earlier one agreed by members of OPEC+, which was signed on April 12, 2020. In the deal, oil producers agreed to cut about 10 percent of global oil supply in order to stem the slide in oil prices which has affected Nigeria’s revenue.
Notably, the minister linked the gradual revamp of crude oil prices in the last few days to the actions by the Saudi government.
Another cut was also announced by Nigeria’s fellow OPEC members, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in order to push prices up by slashing supply of the commodity to the global market.
Despite technical and other challenges, Mr Sylva assured that Nigeria has been working assiduously to keep to the April 12 OPEC+ agreement that will see the country reduce up to 400,000 barrels per day.
