Nigeria’s daily crude oil production increased to about 2.09 million barrels in 2018, translating to a nine per cent rise when compared with the 2017 average daily production of 1.86 million barrels.
The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Maikanti Baru, said the nation had maintained a line of consistent year-on-year improvement in its daily crude oil production.
A statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday by the NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu, stated that Baru disclosed this in an end-of-year message to the staff members of the corporation.
The NNPC boss said the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, Nigerian Gas Company, Petroleum Products Marketing Company, Duke Oil, NIDAS and Integrated Data Services Limited, were among the companies that boosted the corporation’s performance in 2018.
Baru singled out NPDC, the corporation’s upstream company, as the major contributor to the industry’s success story in 2018, expressing enthusiasm on the 52 per cent daily crude oil production growth by the company when compared with its 2017 performance.
He explained that the average crude production from NPDC’s operated assets alone grew from an average of 108,000 barrels of oil per day in 2017 to 165,000bod in 2018. He said NPDC’s equity production share of 172,000bpd, representing about eight per cent of national daily production, was no less impressive.
Baru said the 200,000bpd addition which the Egina Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel completed and sailed away to a location in August last year, added to the nation’s daily production, adding that the project achieved first oil at 11.20pm on December 29, 2018.
The NNPC boss told his staff members that the oil firm made a save of $1.7bn with the corporation’s Joint Venture partners over a five-year tenor repayment plan, adding that already the corporation had defrayed $1.5bn of the arrears.
Baru promised that the NNPC would stick to the repayment agreement with the JV partners while transiting to self-funding IJV modes with the corporation’s partners. He said the tiding up of the cash call issues had led to increased commitment and enthusiasm to invest in the Nigerian oil and gas industry and had boosted NNPC’s credit profile internationally.
On other achievements in the upstream sector, Baru said the NNPC was able to ensure a reduction in the contracting cycle for upstream operations to nine months from an average of 24, even as the corporation targets a six-month cycle.
Others include the lowering of crude production cost from $27/barrel to $22/barrel, improvement in the security situation in the Niger Delta through constructive engagement and dialogue with relevant stakeholders.
Baru also revealed that in the frontier basins, NNPC had intensified explorations activities in the Benue Trough, with the expected spudding of Kolmani River Well 2 on January 19, 2019. He said activities would resume in the Chad Basin as soon as there is a green-light on the security situation in the enclave.
In the midstream sector, the NNPC boss stated that in 2018, Nigeria achieved an average national daily gas production of 7.9 billion standard cubic feet, translating to three per cent above the 2017 average daily gas production of 7.67bscf.
https://punchng.com/nigerias-daily-crude-oil-production-increases-by-9
