By Abiola Olawale
The daily oil production of Nigeria fell by 160,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of 2024, a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed.
According to the report, Nigeria recorded an average daily production of 1.41 million barrels per day, lower than the first quarter’s production volume, which stood at 1.57 million barrels per day.
However, on a year-to-year basis, the country’s daily production increased by 190,000 barrels more than the daily average production of 1.22 Mbps recorded in the same quarter of 2023.
The NBS in the report stated: “The nation in the second quarter of 2024 recorded an average daily oil production of 1.41 million barrels per day, higher than the daily average production of 1.22mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2023 by 0.19mbpd and lower than the first quarter of 2024 production volume of 1.57 Mbps by 0.16mbpd.”
The New Diplomat reports that Nigeria’s oil output has continued to dwindle since 2020 when production fell from close to 2mbpd to 1.6mbpd
Between 2018 and 2019, daily oil output quarterly averaged 2 million barrels.
However, in the second quarter of 2020, the output dropped to 1.81mbpd, followed by 1.67mbpd in the third quarter.
The slope has since continued to fall until it dipped to 1.2mbpd in Q2 2022.
Since then, the efforts of the government to ramp up production have not yielded the desired result, especially in the face of unrelenting oil thieves and vandals.
As a result, Nigeria has not been able to meet the 1.5mbpd quota allocated to it by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The NBS added that the real growth of the oil sector was 10.15 per cent (year-on-year) in Q2 2024, indicating an increase of 23.58 percentage points relative to the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2023 (-13.43 per cent).
It was said that growth increased by 4.45 percentage points when compared to Q1 2024, which was 5.70 per cent.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the oil sector recorded a growth rate of -10.51 per cent in Q2 2024.
The oil sector contributed 5.70 per cent to the total real Gross Domestic Product in Q2 2024, up from the figure recorded in the corresponding period of 2023 and down from the preceding quarter, where it contributed 5.34 per cent and 6.38 per cent, respectively.
