According to the Africa energy chamber, Nigeria’s crude oil production is expected to grow to 1.75 million barrels per day(bpd). The AEC noted this in its state of African energy report released on October 26th. According to the AEC, the Nigeria crude oil production is expected to increase from 1.65million bpd in 2022 to about 1.75 million bpd in 2023.
The report recognized the fact that although there were outages recorded in the country’s crude production in 2022, which saw Angola replace it as the largest crude oil producer on African continent, production rate is expected to increase in the coming year. The output of Libya is anticipated to increase from 1.12 million bpd in 2022 to 1.3 million bpd in 2023. While Angola is predicted to slightly decrease from 1.13 million bpd in 2022 to about 1.1 million bpd in 2023, Algeria is predicted to remain stable at 1.2 million bpd over the period. The AEC report outlines the following obstacles to Nigeria’s production output: a lack of fiscal reforms eventually leading to a lack of deep-water developments, disagreements between International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in the Niger Delta and local administrations, pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft, crude oil spills, and pollution. However, these issues have not affected Nigeria’s hydrocarbon output. The top three NOCs in Africa in terms of total hydrocarbon output are Libya’s National Oil Corporation, Algeria’s Sonatrach, and Nigeria’s National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited. NNPC Limited is expected to reach output levels of 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) for 2022 – 2023. As projects where NNPC Limited holds stakes see some redevelopments and reach the start-up milestone, NNPC is expected to see a production increase to 1.2 million bpd by the end of this decade. The projected increase in production capacity of Nigeria will be a huge boost to the country’s economy. It is not projected however to affect the prices of AGO/MGO
Source: Nairametrics, Naijaonpoint