The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has decided to focus its attention on condensates production to compensate for lost revenue from oil exports due to the country’s commitment to the OPEC+ production cut deal.
Nigerian daily This Day quoted the managing director of the NNPC as laying out this plan, and noting a boost in condensates production should help push revenues higher.
Whether condensates should be included in oil production figures when calculating OPEC’s production quotas has been a longstanding dispute.
Nevertheless, Mallam Mele Kiyari also said Nigeria remained committed to the OPEC+ deal saying production caps were in the best interest of global oil markets, This Day reports. He added that he hoped demand would start to recover by the end of this year to allow for a modest increase in crude oil production.
The biggest oil exporter in Africa and one of OPEC’s biggest producers has been struggling with both the pandemic’s effect on its central industry and a long history of corruption and environmental damage. To solve some of its longstanding problems, Nigeria has been working on a new Petroleum Industry Bill, and the current government has made it a priority to have it turned into law soon.
The bill, set to replace more than a dozen different laws and regulations, however, is far from perfect. Last year, Nigerian media reported that if the bill is passed by legislators, the country could lose as much as 38 percent of its deepwater crude oil output by 2025 and close to a third of its production potential by 2030.
“The current PIB 2020 does not improve the investment environment for new project FIDs (final investment decisions) to be taken,” the country’s Oil Producers’ Trade Section said in a statement last December.
“With the right fiscal framework, OPTS could invest an additional about $9bn in deepwater projects to grow oil and gas development in Nigeria with resultant benefits for the nation,” the group, which comprises local and foreign oil and gas companies, also said in the document.
