By Adedapo Adesanya

Crude oil was down by around 4 per cent on Thursday after the United States President, Mr Donald Trump, said the crackdown on protesters in Iran was easing, calming concerns over potential military action against the Middle-East country and oil supply disruptions.

Brent crude futures depreciated by $2.76 or 4.15 per cent to $63.76 a barrel and the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell by $2.83 or 4.56 per cent, to $59.19 a barrel.

President Trump said he had been told that killings during Iran’s crackdown on protests were easing and he believed there was no current plan for large-scale executions, though he warned that the US was still weighing military action against the oil producer, which is a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Countries (OPEC).

Thousands of people are reported to have been killed in the weeks-long protests, and the American president has vowed to support demonstrators, saying help was “on its way.”

Iran has threatened the US with reprisals were it to be attacked, alongside conciliatory signals, including the suspension of a protester’s execution.

The New York Times reported that many of the US Gulf allies, including several of Iran’s own rivals, have also pushed against a US military intervention, warning that the ripple effects would undermine regional security and damage their reputations as havens for foreign capital.

Regardless, the US withdrew some personnel from military bases in the Middle East, after a senior Iranian official said Iran had told neighbours it would hit American bases if America strikes.

Venezuela has begun reversing oil production cuts made under a US embargo, with crude exports also resuming. The OPEC member’s oil exports fell close to zero in the weeks after the US imposed a blockade on oil shipments in December, with only Chevron exporting crude from its joint ventures with PDVSA under US license.

The embargo left millions of barrels stuck in onshore tanks and vessels. As storage filled, PDVSA was forced to shut wells and order oil production cuts at joint ventures in the country.

With this development, the Venezuelan state oil company is now instructing the joint ventures to resume output from well clusters that were shut.

On the demand side, OPEC said on Wednesday that 2027 oil demand was likely to rise at a similar pace to this year and published data indicating a near balance between supply and demand in 2026, contrasting with other forecasts of a glut.

By Adedapo Adesanya

Nigeria’s crude oil production slipped slightly to 1.422 million barrels per day in December 2025 from 1.436 million barrels per day in November, according to data from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

OPEC in its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR), quoting primary sources, noted that the oil output was below the 1.5 million barrels per day quota for the nation.

The OPEC data indicate that Nigeria last met its production quota in July 2025, with output remaining below target from August through December.

Quarterly figures reveal a consistent decline across 2025; Q1: 1.468 million barrels per day, Q2: 1.481 million barrels per day, Q3: 1.444 million barrels per day, and 1.42 million barrels per day in Q4.

However, the cartel acknowledged that despite the gradual decrease in oil production, Nigeria’s non-oil sector grew in the second half of last year.

The organisation noted that “Nigeria’s economy showed resilience in 2H25, posting sound growth despite global challenges, as strength in the non-oil economy partly offset slower growth in the oil sector.”

According to the report, cooling inflation, a stronger Naira, lower refined fuel imports, and stronger remittance inflows are improving domestic and external conditions.

“A stronger naira, easing food prices due to the harvest, and a cooling in core inflation also point to gradually fading underlying pressures”, the report noted.

It forecast inflation to decelerate further on the back of past monetary tightening, currency strength, and seasonal harvest effects, though it noted that monetary policy remains restrictive.

“Seasonally adjusted real GDP growth at market prices moderated to stand at 3.9%, y-o-y, in 3Q25, down from 4.2% in 2Q25. Nonetheless, this is still a healthy and robust growth level, supported by strengthening non-oil activity, with growth in that segment rising by 0.3 percentage points to 3.9%, y-o-y. Inflation continued to decelerate in November, with headline CPI falling for an eighth straight month to 14.5%, y-o-y, following 16.1%, y-o-y, in October”.

OPEC, however, stated that while preserving recent disinflation gains is important, the persistently high policy rate – implying real interest rates of around 12% – risks weighing on aggregate demand in the near term.

By Aduragbemi Omiyale

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday revealed that inflation rate for December 2025 stood at 15.15 per cent compared with the 14.45 per cent it put the previous month.

However, it recalculated the November 2025 inflation rate at 17.33 per cent after using a 12-month index reference period where the average consumer price index (CPI) for the 12 months of 2024 is equated to 100. This is a departure from the single-month index reference period, in which December 2024 was set to 100, which would have produced an artificial spike in the December 2025 year-on-year inflation rate.

The NBS had earlier informed stakeholders a few days ago that it was changing its methodology for inflation to reflect the economic reality. This is coming after the organisation changed the base year from 2009 to 2024 earlier in 2025.

In its report released today, the stats agency explained that this process was in line with international best practice as contained in the Consumer Price Index Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF) Manual, specifically in Section 9.125 and the ECOWAS Harmonised CPI Manual, which address index reference period maximisation, following a rebasing exercise.

On a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in December 2025 was 0.54 per cent, lower than the 1.22 per cent recorded in November 2025.

The NBS also revealed that on a year-on-year basis, the urban inflation rate for last month stood at 14.85 per cent versus 37.29 per cent in December 2024, while on a month-on-month basis, it jumped to 0.99 per cent from 0.95 per cent in the preceding month.

As for the rural inflation rate in December 2025, it stood at 14.56 per cent on a year-on-year basis from 32.47 per cent in December 2024, and on a month-on-month basis, it declined to -0.55 per cent from 1.88 per cent in November 2025.

It was also disclosed that food inflation rate in December 2025 was 10.84 per cent on a year-on-year basis from 39.84 per cent in December 2024, while on a month-on-month basis, it declined to -0.36 per cent from 1.13 per cent in November 2025 (1.13%).

This was attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices of tomatoes, garri, eggs, potatoes, carrots, millet, vegetables, plantain, beans, wheat grain, grounded pepper, fresh onions and others.