By Akinyemi Precious
Statistics by the African Energy Chamber (AEC) in its Q2 State of African Energy report has revealed that Nigeria lost 165,000 barrels per day from crude oil production outages between January and May 2023.
The daily loss amounts to 24,915,000 barrels of crude oil between January and May 2023.
The AEC said that Nigeria’s unplanned outages from January through May have resulted in the country losing about 165,000 bpd and adding up to over 90 per cent of the unplanned outages over the period.
However, the report also mentioned that a variety of issues led to these unplanned outages in the country which include; Force Majeure is being implemented due to pipeline blasts, Rampant crude theft and a large number of illegal connections on existing pipelines, Fire incidents near pipelines, Worker and union strikes create industrial disputes, Terminals not operating at 100 per cent capacity.
“Maintenance activities on fields flowing Forcados, Usan, and Abo crude streams also impacted Nigeria’s output in H1 2023.”
Note that in July 2023, Nigeria produced 1,081,396 barrels of crude oil per day, meanwhile, it produced 38,258 barrels per day of blended condensate and 174,509 barrels per day of unblended condensates. All these made up a total of 1,294,162 barrels per day for the month.
Since the start of 2023, this is the second time that Nigeria’s crude production rate dipped below 1.4 m/bpd, the first time was in April 2023, when the country produced 1,245,028 barrels.
In the AEC report, production forecasts for 2024 based on field-level performance from the producing fields in producers like Algeria, Nigeria, and Angola suggest that only Algeria is expected to be producing surplus over the target and hence continue to comply with the OPEC cuts and targets.
It was projected that despite heavy cuts of 360,000 bpd, Nigeria is expected to reach 95 per cent of its production targets, and as such, can be expected to comply completely with the OPEC cuts, not because the country is adhering to the policies, but because the production capacity is lesser than the target.
During a panel discussion on energy security during the July 2023 OPEC seminar in Vienna, Austria, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum, Aduda told attendees that the security challenges in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector have not entirely stopped investors from investing in the sector.
He also mentioned that the oil and gas investments will help the country in its energy transition agenda because there is also a need to invest in critical minerals which are needed for developing renewable energies.