Nigeria boosts January's oil production, complies with OPEC in February
JOHANNESBURG (Bloomberg) -- Nigeria implemented its portion of the OPEC+ production deal in February, said the country’s oil minister, a move that enhances the impact of supply cuts that have already boosted crude prices.
“We’re basically complying, effective February” with the country’s pledged 53,000 barrel-a-day reduction, Minister of State for Petroleum Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said in an interview on Thursday. “The price fluctuations mean OPEC needs to be a bit more together, a bit more determined to try to defend the market.”
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies agreed to reduce output by 1.2 MMbopd in the first half of 2019 in order to prevent a supply glut. While the deal has contributed to a jump in crude prices of more than 20% so far this year, implementation has been uneven, with Saudi Arabia cutting deeper and faster than promised and other nations including Russia going slow.
Nigeria actually boosted crude production by 52,000 bpd to 1.792 MMbpd in January, according to third-party estimates compiled by OPEC’s secretariat. In February, the country was compliant with its agreed 1.685-MMbpd limit, Kachikwu said.
The producers’ group will meet again in April to discuss whether to continue the supply reductions in the second half. Nigeria would have a hard time making deeper cuts, the minister said.
“If more cuts need to come, there would be major challenges because between December and now we’ve had the Egina field come online,” Kachikwu said.
The offshore field, operated by French energy giant Total SA, hasn’t yet reached its maximum production level of about 200,000 bopd, but may do so in March, he said. Some of that output is a light oil called condensate, which isn’t counted in the OPEC+ deal, and some is crude, he said.
“The more we go outside the parameters of what we’ve agreed upon, the more we would struggle. We need all the money we can get for the country,” Kachikwu said.
