By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria continued to lag in its crude oil production despite increasing its output by 77,000 barrels per day in October, but it wasn’t enough to return the country to the top of the table as Africa’s largest producer.
The country is now in the fourth position behind the trio of Angola, Algeria, and Libya due to its continued inability to meet the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil quota.
In the month under review, Algeria drilled 1.060 million barrels per day, Angola produced 1.051 million barrels per day, Libya’s output was 1.163 million barrels per day, while Nigeria’s oil production stood at 1.024 million barrels per day.
Even though Algeria gained a paltry 2,000 barrels per day, it lost 40,000 barrels per day, with Libya gaining 6,000 barrels per day, according to OPEC’s secondary source in its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) published on Monday.
Giving its review of Nigeria’s economic environment, OPEC noted, “Nigeria’s economic outlook has been impacted by the devastating rains and floods that affected 31 of Nigeria’s 36 states and has resulted in a significant loss of land, lives and livelihoods. The latest data suggested that record-high inflation continues to persist.”
“Upward price pressures were mainly caused by supply disruptions amid the widespread flooding and higher import costs. However, considering the broad money-supply growth of 21% y-o-y in August, there is a significant monetary component behind the inflationary spiral,” it added.
The cartel warned, “the inflationary pressures are suppressing consumption spending, which might weigh on the growth of household volume consumption.”
OPEC’s crude oil production dropped by 210,000 barrels per day in the month under review compared to the previous month after the cartel, and the wider OPEC+ group reversed the small output increase in September.
The crude oil production of all 13 OPEC members, including those exempt from the OPEC+ pact – Venezuela, Iran, and Libya – averaged 29.49 million barrels per day in October.
Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC and its top producer, saw its production decline by 149,000 barrels per day to an average of 10.838 million barrels per day last month, as OPEC+ decided in early September to reverse a 100,000 barrels per day increase in target oil production, which was only intended for September.
Saudi Arabia’s production dropped the most among OPEC members and was below the targeted production level of 11.004 million barrels per day per the schedule the OPEC+ meeting had adopted. The Kingdom self-reported higher production for October than secondary sources’ estimates, at 10.957 million barrels per day, down by 84,000 barrels per day compared to September.
Production in Angola saw the second-steepest drop in OPEC producers in October, but it wasn’t the result of a conscious reduction since the top African producer has been lagging behind its quota for many months. Angola’s crude oil production fell by 78,000 barrels per day to 1.067 million barrels per day in October, according to OPEC’s secondary sources.
Over the coming months, OPEC’s production is set to decline further after the OPEC+ alliance decided to reduce its collective target by 2 million barrels per day for November.
Although the actual cut is expected to be around half that number, at 1.1 million barrels per day, it still is the biggest cut since the record production reduction announced in April 2020 when oil demand plunged at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dipo Olowookere