Modupe Gbadeyanka
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Crude oil production in Nigeria gas recorded a significant increase in the past few days, rising to two million barrels per day, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr Maikanti Baru, has revealed.
Mr Baru, while addressing journalists after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, stated that this increase happened since last week.
“We have made a significant improvement in our oil production. We now produce 2 million barrels per day. This started since last week,” Mr Baru told reporters after the meeting with the President.
He added that the Federal Government was working hard to meet the target of 2.2 million barrels per day set in the 2017 budget.
“At the moment, repairs are ongoing in the Trans-Forcados pipeline that was destroyed by vandals. It is capable of producing about 350,000 barrels per day,” the NNPC boss said.
Mr Baru said at a time, the volume of oil produced by Nigeria had dropped to about 1.5 million barrels per day.
Business Post gathered that this drop was as a result of activities of militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of the country, which plunged the nation into recession because of reduction in its earnings, further made worse by a fall in the price of the commodity in the international market.
In order to solve the Niger Delta crisis, the Federal Government entered into negotiations with leaders from the region.
During President Buhari’s medical vacation to London in February this year, the Vice President, who was then acting as President, Mr Yemi Osinbajo, visited the oil producing states in the region to show government’s seriousness in solving the problem. This further gave the militants the assurance that the government was ready to listen to them and transformed into the relative peace in the area at the moment.
