Mele Kyari, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), noted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s role in the transformation of Nigeria’s oil sector.
During a press conference on Friday, September 1, 2023, Kyari stated that under Tinubu’s leadership, Nigeria now produces 1.67 million barrels of oil per day, despite significant security challenges.
He said: “I was just checking the data for Wednesday for crude oil and condensate production, it is at 1.67 million barrels per day, this is substantial if you look at the situation where we were almost going below a million barrels per day about a year and some months ago and this is quite substantial.
“I also confirm that Mr. President has taken significant steps to de-bottleneck the industry in such a way that these resources can come into place. e of them is the tax reform. Today, this industry is operating under 13 different taxes, and I know that the reform team was already looking to see how the fiscal environment in this critical sector is stable because no one invests in this industry without a line of sight of at least 10 years of fiscal stability.
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“With that, we are already seeing interest in people wanting to come and invest in our industry and those who are already with us, coming back to invest, otherwise, if you have instability and security challenges, businesses usually don’t come.
But we are happy today that the interventions are working both in terms of security and providing the fiscal stability basis for companies to invest is already showing up and this is also reflected in NNPCL’s current ability to meet its obligations to its partners which we were failing to do before May 29, 2023 because we were trying to accommodate fuel subsidies.
“I can confirm that by November 2023, we will be on a clean slate.”
In July 2023, Nigeria’s oil production statistics revealed that the country was producing 1,081,396 barrels of crude oil per day. Additionally, it produced 38,258 barrels per day of blended condensate and 174,509 barrels per day of unblended condensates, contributing to a total production of 1,294,162 barrels per day for the highlighted month.
However, it is worth noting that Nigeria continues to grapple with crude oil theft in the oil-producing regions of the Niger Delta. Since the second quarter of 2023, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been reporting a significant number of crude oil theft incidents, with instances sometimes numbering in the hundreds per week.
