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Last updated Sep 14, 2023

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has said Nigeria’s oil output increased to 1.18 million barrels per day in August 2023.

READ ALSO: Nigeria’s Crude oil production hits 1.6m bpd – GMD NNPC The international oil cartel, in its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) indicated that despite the country’s 100,000 bpd output growth, based on direct communication, month-on-month, it still fell short of the 1.74 million bpd quota allocated to the country.

A further analysis of the report indicated that the country pumped an average of 1.144mbpd in the second quarter of 2023, which was lower than the 1.277mbpd output recorded in the preceding quarter.

Despite the marginal rise in August, Nigeria’s oil output has been nosediving lately.

So if the volume of reduction is this frightening, then it is something that calls for urgent investigation. It portends an economic downturn that could be drastic if the situation continues. However, I believe that with all of these new oil discoveries in Nasarawa and Bauchi, and production commencing, there may be a positive change,” Gillis-Harry stated.

On his part, the Executive Secretary, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, Clement Isong, had called on the Federal Government to work hard and stop crude oil theft.

He said oil theft was not only stopping Nigeria from meeting its production quota as approved by OPEC, but denying the country a whole lot of dollars required for the imports of goods.

“The I&E (Importers and Exporters) window is illiquid. There’s no money there. To buy products (fuel), it costs you between $25m to $30m. You can’t find it in the I&E window. So it doesn’t work and that is why people are not importing.

“You can’t access the dollar, you can’t find it right now. Nigeria has to sort out the security issues in the Niger Delta so that we can increase our daily crude oil output.

“If we increase it to 1.8 or two million barrels per day, then there’ll be dollars in the market. So we need to stop oil theft.”

Punch/MTO