Tuesday, March 16, 2010
By Sulaimon Salau
For the first time in seven years, Nigeria's crude production has risen to 2.5 million barrels per day (mbpd), which was largely attributed to the amnesty programme of the Federal Government, that has restored relative peace in the oil producing region.
Oil production had dropped the lowest ebb of 1.7 mmbpd in the heat of repeated militant attacks on the nation's oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta region before President Yar's Adua struck the amnesty deal.
The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Mohammed Barkindo, who disclosed this recently during a courtesy visit of the Chief of Defence Staff, Paul Dike, said the current production figure has not been recorded in the last seven years, due to some difficulties encountered in the industry.
"Gas production is also gradually recovering and there is improvement in the generation of electricity. For the first time since May last year, two of our inland refineries in Warri and Kaduna are now producing at optimal level," he added.
According to him, the collaboration between the NNPC and the military was necessary, particularly at this time when government was more than ever determined to proceed with the reform in the oil and gas sector, particularly the deregulation of the downstream sector.
Earlier, Dike said the military would continue to support the oil and gas sector to cut down on acts of vandalism, noting that the importance of oil in national development could be under- emphasized.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' (OPEC) crude oil production is said to have risen to 29.31 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, an increase of 60,000 (bpd) from an estimated January level of 29.25 million bpd.
According to a survey just released by Platts, beside Iraq, which does not participate in the oil producing group's production agreements, output from the 11 members bound by quotas (OPEC-11), under a 24.845 million bpd collective target, dipped by 10,000 bpd to 26.75 million bpd in February.
Increases totalling 170,000 bpd from Angola, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Venezuela were partly offset by decreases totalling 110,000 bpd from Libya and Nigeria, the latter's production dropping by 100,000 bpd to 1.98 million bpd in February.
The February estimates leave the OPEC-11 overproducing its ceiling by 1.905 million bpd, slightly increasing its rate of compliance to 54.64 per cent from January's 54.4 per cent.
Compliance with the 4.2 million b/d of cuts agreed in late 2008 peaked at close to 82 per cent in March last year but has been declining since last April alongside a broad firming of oil prices.
OPEC ministers would meet in Vienna on March 17, to review the current production agreement which has being in effect since January, 2009.
That agreement has been rubber-stamped at several meetings over the past year and, given remarks made by several ministers in recent weeks, looks set to be renewed yet again at next week's meeting.
Source: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/business/article01/indexn2_html?pdate=160310&ptitle=Nigeria%27s%20oil%20production%20hits%202.5%20million%20bpd
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