Nigeria’s crude oil production hit 2.057mbpd in December

Nigeria’s crude oil production, including condensate hit 2.057 million barrels per day (bpd) in the month of December 2017.

This is higher than the 1.93 million bpd including condensate recorded at the end of the third quarter in September.

The Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources made this disclosure in its facts and figures for the oil industry released at the weekend.

The Ministry added that the country trucked out 36.97 million litres in December; 7.61 million litres of Automated Gas Oil; 1.55 million litres of Dual Purpose Kerosene; 1.82 million litres of Aviation Turbine Kerosene; and 0.20 million litres of Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO).

Nigeria’s crude oil production has been fluctuating in the last six months due to pipeline obstructions, which resulted to a number of force majeure arising from circumstances beyond the operators’ control.

For example, a total of 57.92 million barrels of crude oil and condensate was produced in September 2017, representing an average daily production of 1.93 million barrels.

This represents a decrease of 6.31 per cent compared to August levels. Of the September production, Joint Ventures (JVs), and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC), contributed about 29.43 per cent and 43.26 per cent respectively.

Speaking on the progress made so far in the country’s oil production and export, Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, said the Corporation has achieved 98 per cent automation of all transactions. These include the supply, marketing and sale of the various grades and blends of Nigeria’s crude oil across the world.

He said the automation exercise, which would be concluded in 2018, had enabled NNPC achieve an end-to-end monitoring of every barrel of crude oil sold in the country.

“Today, at a click of a button, we can tell you how much crude oil is sold, at what price, who bought it, and where it has gone to etc,’’ he said.

He said the projection is to operate a completely paperless crude oil data management regime in line with the ongoing transformation of the processes, which have witnessed sweeping reforms since 2015.

He listed the reforms to include the open bid process of customer selection for lifting and purchasing of Nigeria’s crude oil grades, emplacement of efficient crude for product import processes, leading to savings of $1billion in one year as well as the introduction of improved pricing system, which has evolved into a robust and auditable pricing mechanism.

Kyari also explained that the reform had led to the harmonisation of Nigeria’s crude oil data and lifting information, providing access to major internationally recognised reporting agencies like Plat and Argus Media to achieve real time reporting of Nigeria’s crude oil transactions.

He said this development had enabled the country to eliminate the perennial disagreement with its major stakeholder, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on actual production and lifting figures.