Nigeria’s crude oil production is approaching 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari.
Kyari said the 1.7 million barrels per day was a boost from the 1.28 million barrels reported in April.
He disclosed this when he addressed stakeholders at an engagement between the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists and the NNPCL in Lagos on Saturday.
“As of today’s data, we’re inching to 1.7 mbpd. We won’t celebrate this. On 17th of April 2020, our production, without doing anything, without drilling new wells, shot to 2.2 mbpd,” Kyari said.
Kyari noted that Nigeria’s crude oil production keeps dropping due to oil theft and vandalism and called for the need to fight insecurity in the oil and gas sector to increase production.
“How do you increase oil production? Remove the security challenge we have in our onshore assets. As we all know, the security challenge is real. It is not just about theft, it is about the availability of the infrastructure to deliver the volume to the market,” Kyari said.
“No one is going to put money into oil production when he knows the production will not get to the market. Within the last two years, we removed over 5,800 illegal connections from our pipelines. We took down over 600 illegal refineries – cooking pots or whatever they were. You simply cannot get people to put money until you solve that problem.”
Because of pipeline vandalism, Kyari stated that everyone resorted to barging, with some paying $21 to transport a barrel of oil to the terminals.
He stated that; “barging is not normal. Barging is not economical, even trucking. In 1991, we didn’t think of barging, even to put oil on the trucks. But that’s what we are doing today,” he stated.
Kyari, however, added that “the good news” is that “there is substantial work that is being done by the government,” which he will not disclose, adding that “but I know that this will come to pass. It’s already subsiding. We are already seeing the results.”
