By Tsvetana Paraskova
Nigeria has secured a total of $13 billion in investment commitments in its oil and gas sector from major international energy companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies, according to Olu Verheijen, the Special Adviser on Energy to Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu.
Verheijen and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) have recently met with representatives of 15 oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria and have secured their commitment to invest in Nigerian oil and gas, the adviser said in a statement on Friday sent to the Nairametrics outlet in Nigeria.
“We are faced with a revenue crisis which is impacting all Nigerians.
To urgently address this, President Bola Tinubu is actively seeking ways to grow revenue and forex to stabilize our economy and currency, and the oil and gas sector remains critical to our ability to do so despite current production levels falling significantly short of our potential,” Verheijen said.
Earlier this week, Tinubu’s spokesman Ajuri Ngelale said that Exxon would boost its crude oil production in Nigeria by an additional 40,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Currently, Nigeria’s oil production is around 1 million bpd below its capacity. The government has cited a lack of investments, a shortage of funding sources because of the energy transition, and insecurity among the factors driving the situation.
Nigeria aims to significantly increase its oil production to up to 1.7 million bpd by November 2023, hoping to win a higher quota in the OPEC+ agreement, Gabriel Tanimu Aduda, Permanent Secretary at Nigeria’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources, told Energy Intelligence in July.
Nigeria’s quota was 1.742 million bpd earlier this year, but due to its underproduction of more than 400,000 bpd, the output cap for Nigeria was lowered to 1.38 million bpd at the OPEC+ meeting in early June.
Nigeria has consistently failed to produce to its quota in the OPEC+ agreement. The combination of pipeline vandalism and oil theft with a lack of investment in capacity has made Nigeria the biggest laggard in crude oil production in the OPEC+ alliance.
NB: Tsvetana Paraskova wrote this article for Oilprice.com
