Nigeria has long had aspirations for increasing its crude
oil production, most recently promising to boost production to 1.7 million
barrels per day by November of this year.
But now, Exxon is pledging to boost production on its end,
according to Nigeria, who was citing information from Exxon's president of
global upstream operations. Exxon's promises could put more weight behind an
announced production increase.
"Nigeria has never been more ready for business than it
is now," the spokesperson's statement read, quoting President Tinubu.
Nigeria is OPEC's largest producer in Africa. Its OPEC
production quota was lowered earlier this year to 1.38 million bpd—from 1.742
million bpd—when it failed to meet its quota under the agreement due to
repeated challenges with oil theft, pipeline vandalism, and lack of investment
in capacity. The problem has been recently quantified by the Nigeria Extractive
Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), which estimates that Nigeria lost
to theft more than 615 million barrels of crude oil valued at more than $46
billion in the decade ending in 2020. That's more than 140,000 bpd.
Nigeria's planned production for next year is 1.578 million
bpd, although its stated capacity is 2.5 million bpd, according to the chief
executive at the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
Nigeria's crude production was up in August from July
levels, but still below the 1.320 million bpd that it reached in June.
Nigeria's August production came in at 1.269 million bpd, according to OPEC's
secondary sources published in the latest edition of its Monthly Oil Market
Report.
NUPRC announced earlier this month that it was planning an
international investment roadshow to attract cash to its extractives sector.