Abuja, Sept 2, 2023 – Nigeria is now producing an average of 1.67 million barrels of oil and condensates per day, an improvement of about one million barrels per day in December last year.
The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), which gave the statistics on Friday, attributed the improvement to improved security in the Niger Delta area.
Mele Kyari, the NNPC Group Managing Director, said: “We’ve already seen very significant changes in our production environment.”
Crude oil production had been adversely affected by oil theft from pipelines and wells and has, in turn, affected Nigeria’s finances.
President Tinubu, during his inauguration, had introduced new economic measures like the removal of petrol subsidy and foreign exchange reforms which had brought some sanity into the oil sector.
Kyari said Nigeria would have been spending about 1 trillion naira ($1.3 billion) monthly on the subsidy “in today’s market conditions”, he said, adding that petrol consumption is down 30% to 46 million litres after the subsidy removal.
He added that foreign exchange demand for petrol imports has also declined.
“We simply don’t have those resources anymore. We’re not just saving money, we’re also facing realities around what we can afford,” Kyari said.
