NIGERIA RECLAIMS POSITION AS AFRICA'S TOP OIL PRODUCER

Nigeria may have reclaimed its position as Africa’s top oil producer beating Angola. Angola had led the African oil producing countries with its 1.7 million barrels of crude oil a day, well above Nigeria’s 1.5 million barrels per day, in September 2016, for seven straight months.

According to the December 2016 Monthly oil Market report (MOMR) of the OPEC, crude oil production from Nigeria went a notch above that of Angola even before the start of 2017 as per the planned production cut agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC producers.

Angola would be expected to cut about 78,000 barrels per day (bd) of its production in the agreement which was sealed in late 2016.

But secondary sources in the MOMR indicated that in November last year, Nigeria and Angola produced 1.692 million barrels (mb) of oil apiece. Information from primary sources in the MOMR stated that Nigeria produced 1.782mb of oil as against Angola’s 1.688mb to show its takeover of Angola by about 94,000bd.

According to secondary sources, OPEC crude oil production in November increased by 151tb/d compared to the previous month to average 33.87mb/d. Crude oil output increased the most in Angola, Nigeria and Libya, while production in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia showed the largest decline.

“A new OPEC-14 production target of 32.5mb/d as per 1 January 2017 represents a reduction of around 1.2mb/d from October production levels,” said OPEC’s December MOMR.

Earlier in the year when Nigeria lost its position as Africa’s largest producer, its output fell to about 1.677mb, as against Angola’s 1.782mb then.

The development was made possible by repeated attacks on Nigerian oil infrastructure by militants in the Niger Delta.

This dragged the country’s daily oil production down by about 700,000bd as reported by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in July, and further confirmed by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu.

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