The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has disclosed that Nigeria produced 159,158,191 barrels of crude oil in the first four months of 2024.
According to the NUPRC data, 44.2 million barrels of crude were produced in January, with an average daily production of 1.42 million barrels per day.
In February, the country pumped 38.3 million barrels of oil at an average of 1.32mbpd.
Similarly, 38.1 million barrels were produced in March, when the country’s daily output slumped to 1.23mbpd.
Our correspondent gathered that the daily oil production rose marginally to 1.28mbp in April, while the monthly production was 38.4 million barrels.
In the same period in 2023, the country’s total oil output from January to April was 144.8 million barrels, 14.3 million lower than what was recorded in 2024.
However, during the first four months of 2020, the country produced 215.2 million barrels of crude oil, 56 million barrels more than what was obtained within the same period this year.
It was reported that Nigeria has been struggling with low oil production despite all efforts to ramp up daily output.
Recently, Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, bemoaned the negative impacts of oil theft and vandalism on the nation’s economy, saying the act discouraged investments in the oil and gas sector.
Kyari stated that as of May 18, the nation’s oil output has increased to nearly 1.7 million barrels per day, and express optimistic that production will rise in the future.
“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.
“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 6,800 illegal refineries—cooking pots or whatever they were. You simply cannot get people to put money until you solve that problem.
“The good news is, there is substantial work that is being done by the government and I’m not going to speak about it. But I know that this will come to pass. It is already subsiding. We are already seeing the results.”
According to the NNPC boss, the country is inching to 1.7mbpd.
Kyari said, “On April 17, 2020, our production, without doing anything, without drilling new wells, shot to 2.2mbpd. The difference was COVID-19. The thieves, the vandals, everybody went to sleep,”.
