Nigeria has maintained its position as the largest crude oil producer in Africa amid production rise to 1.276 million barrels per day in June, 2024.
This is according to the latest data of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.
This represents a 25,000 barrels per day increase from the 1.251 mbpd recorded in May.
Meanwhile, OPEC data showed that the secondary sources placed Nigeria’s daily average crude oil production in June at 1.362 million barrels per day, a decrease of 10 thousand barrels compared to May’s figure of 1.372 million bpd.
Despite the according to Secondary data, Nigeria has maintained led as Africa’s largest crude oil producer, followed closely by Libya, which produced 1.2 million bpd in June.
However, the average crude oil production of 1.27 mbpd in June indicates that for the first half of 2024, Nigeria has consistently fallen short of its OPEC production quota of 1.5 million barrels per day and its budget target of 1.78 million barrels per day.
The Minister of Petroleum Resources (oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, had earlier projected a 2,000,000 million barrels per day crude oil production by next year. However, the country had continued to lag behind its set out production target.
Consequently, the Group Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari recently declared emergency on the oil and gas sector.