Nigeria produced a total of 236,229,281 barrels of crude oil in the first half of 2024, The PUNCH has learned.
Data obtained by our correspondent from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission confirmed that 44.2 million barrels of crude were produced in January while the country pumped 38.3 million barrels of oil in February.
Similarly, 38.1 million barrels were produced in March, and the monthly production for April was 38.4 million.
In May, 38.8 million barrels were pumped and 38.3 million barrels were achieved in June.
In the same period in 2023, the country’s total oil output from January to June was 219.5 million barrels, 16.73 million lower than what was recorded in 2024.
However, during the first six months of 2020, the country produced 302.42 million barrels of crude oil, representing 66 million barrels more than what was obtained within the same period this year.
This is an indication that the nation’s oil production has been fluctuating, declining more than appreciating over the years.
Data from NUPRC showed that the country produced an average of 1.43 million barrels of crude oil per day in the first month of the year, being the highest average daily crude production within the six months.
In February, the daily oil production dropped to 1.32mbpd and dropped further to 1.23mbpd in March.
Efforts by the government to stop the figures from dipping further may have yielded results as the daily production appreciated marginally to 1.28mbpd in April.
However, the figure fell again to 1.25mbpd in May, at a time the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, said the country’s daily oil production was nearing 1.7 million barrels.
The month of June saw the production increasing marginally to 1.28mbpd, giving hope of recovery to the Nigerian government, whose economy depends heavily on crude oil.
Recently, Kyari lamented the negative impacts of oil theft and vandalism on the nation’s economy, saying the act discouraged investments in the oil and gas sector.
“How do you increase oil production? Remove the security challenge we have in our onshore assets. As we all know, the security challenge is real. It is not just about theft; it is about the availability of the infrastructure to deliver the volume to the market.
“No one will put money into oil production when he knows the production will not get to the market. In the last two years, we removed over 5,800 illegal connections from our pipelines. We took down over 6,000 illegal refineries—cooking pots or whatever they were. You simply cannot get people to put money until you solve that problem,” Kyari stated.
During a meeting of economic stakeholders with the Senate Committee on Finance on Monday, Kyari said Nigeria would soon begin the production of 2mbpd crude oil.
“Mr Chairman and members of the joint committee, let me just confirm that NNPC and the oil and gas industry are very critical in bringing a turnaround in our current economic situation, and we understand the importance of this. We are taking every step that is practical for us to achieve this.
“We have already seen growth in our oil and gas production because of certain actions that Mr President personally took, and also, the very mere truth that we have also declared war on production activities, and this is yielding the required results.
“The combination of these two has now seen us restoring production in our country, and we believe that, as the minister has said, we will soon hit the target of two million barrels of oil production per day,” Kyari assured.
The NNPC GCEO did not disclose when the average daily crude production would skyrocket from the current 1.2 million barrels to two million barrels.
