Nigeria’s Oil Production To Hit 1.7mb/d April 2022 – Platts

Nigeria’s oil production will hit 1.7 barrel a day in April this year. This is according to Patts Analytics.
According to the report, the increment is down from levels of 1.9 million bpd recorded in April 2020.
The country’s output had slide to 1.2mb/d in 2021 despite OPEC cut quota that allows it to produce between 1.7mb/d and 1.5mb/d in the year due to a couple of operational and technical issues.
Nigeria has the capacity to pump around 2.2 million barrels per day of crude and condensate, with the NNPC projecting to hit 4mb/d.
Ongoing field and pipeline issues, fiscal stress and insecurity in the Niger Delta are likely to continue to threaten the growth outlook for Nigerian oil output, according to Platts Analytics.
The Nigerian government is aiming to attract much-needed investment to bolster oil exploration and production and increase reserves and output to 40 billion barrels by the mid-2020s, but these targets are starting to look unattainable.
“Investment decisions are billed to be taken on these landmark projects around next year to arrest Nigeria’s sagging oil production volumes,” an official from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission told S&P Global Platts. “But there are dark clouds hovering around sanctioning these projects now due to the emergence of the new COVID-19 variant.”
Nigeria is likely to contend with a gale of divestments by international oil companies to reduce operating, security challenges and the huge costs of battling with the COVID-19 pandemic, industry officials and analysts told Platts.
According to the global provider of energy information, 2022 poses to be a very challenging year for Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, with the country facing a race against time to implement reforms needed to bolster exploration and check declining oil production as it fights a wave of divestments from IOCs.
It reported that the signing into law of the long-delayed Petroleum Industry Act, previously known as the Petroleum Industry Bill, in August this year is not expected to bring the much-needed succour to the oil sector.
The landmark PIA was signed into law on August 16 and was expected to turn the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to a private company within six months in order to make it easier for the struggling company to raise funds for oil exploration and production. But the impact of this bill has so far been barely felt.
The PIA could be hugely beneficial, but government officials have lacked professionalism in putting it into place, S&P Global Platts quoted the Chief Executive Officer, Degeconek, Abiodun Adesanya, as saying.
He said, “The fact is that this Petroleum Industry Act is coming a little too late as it has been delayed for too long.
“Those who were rightly placed to pioneer the implementation are not the people in government now. So, I expect to see more divestment by oil majors from selected assets because things are not working as they should be.”