The Federal Government has written to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), seeking an increment in the oil production quota.
The country is seeking production quota rising to 1.829 million barrels per day; 400,000 barrels above what it does presently.
The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, made this known while addressing the Gastech 2021 conference in Dubai on Tuesday.
According to the Minister, Nigeria has a capacity to produce 2.2 million barrels per day, noting the technical problems that had hampered the country’s output would soon be resolved.
The production quota for Nigeria currently stands at 1.614 million bpd for September.
Meanwhile, according to S&P Global Platts, Nigeria self-reported crude output of 1.27 million bpd in August, down from 1.44 million b/d in July, representing heaviest drop in output.
Despite technical challenges in oil production, Sylva insisted that Nigeria deserves a higher quota.
“We’ve just put a request on the table, and we expect that to be looked at. We have capacity for more production than we are producing right now. Unfortunately, we are constrained by the quota,” the minister said.
OPEC and its allies are scheduled to meet on October 4, with the current OPEC+ agreement calling for the group to collectively raise output by 400,000 bpd each month through the end of 2022 and a review of the pact scheduled in December 2021.
