Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has confirmed that Nigeria increased its crude oil production by 171,000 barrels per day in November to 1.186mbpd, though about 700,000 barrels per day less than its quota for the month.
The oil cartel disclosed this in its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for December, noting that considering direct oil production report from the country, Nigeria’s output increased by about 171,000 barrels per day last month to hit 1.186 million barrels per day.
The figure, the OPEC report indicated, was far less than Nigeria’s given 1.8 million barrels per day. This means that Nigeria is still producing below the 1.493 million barrels per day in 2020 and 2021 when it averaged 1.323 million barrels per day.
Nigeria’s production began to slump heavily in the first quarter of 2022, the report stated, when Nigeria drilled 1.3 million barrels per day on average. It further reduced to 1.133 million barrels in the second quarter and fell substantially to 999,000 barrels per day in quarter three of this year.
Nigeria has blamed oil theft and pipeline vandalism for its inability to meet its production allocation for about a year.
In terms of the general outlook, OPEC stated that Nigeria’s economy expanded by 2.3 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022, decelerating from the growth of 3.5 per cent year-on-year in Q2 2022.
The report explained that this marked the eighth consecutive quarter of growth, yet the slowest rate since the first quarter of 2021.
Moreover, it noted that economic conditions were challenged by the factors such as natural disasters that have hampered productivity in the country. Nigeria recently experienced massive flooding in at least one-third of its states.
Stating that the non-oil sector has been the key growth engine, OPEC stressed that this expanded at a slower pace of 4.3 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter compared with 4.8 per cent in 2Q22.
“The inflation rate accelerated to its highest level in 17 years in October as localised food and fuel shortages increased the headline inflation rate to 21.1 per cent y-o-y from 20.8 per cent y-o-y in September,” it added.
According to the report, OPEC oil production in November decreased by 744,000 barrels per day compared to October, which was 28.83 million barrels per day, with the members of the organisation fulfilling the oil agreement by 174 per cent.
“According to secondary sources, total OPEC-13 crude oil production averaged 28.83 million bpd in November 2022, lower by 744 bpd m-o-m.
“Crude oil output increased mainly in Nigeria and Angola, while production in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Iraq declined,” the report said.
In the same vein, out of 13 OPEC countries which have obligations to limit production under the OPEC+ deal and were supposed to reduce oil production by 1.273 million barrels per day from the level of August, the total production reduction in November was 2.211 million barrels per day.
