Eight oil drilling rigs operated in Nigeria in October as against seven in the previous month, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has stated.
In its latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report for November 2022, the organisation stated that an increased rig count was recorded in Nigeria in October.
It, however, noted that this came as oil-producing nations witnessed lower official selling prices and weaker crude differentials for some grades, which resulted in lower OPEC Reference Basket values in October.
Data from the global oil cartel showed that the ORB fell by $1.70 month-on-month, or 1.8 per cent, to stand at $93.62/barrel.
“On a yearly average, the ORB was up by $34.80, or 50.9 per cent, from $68.33/barrel in 2021, to average $103.13/barrel so far this year,” OPEC stated in its report.
On the functional oil drilling rigs in Nigeria, OPEC stated that eight of the facilities were in operation last month, as against seven that operated in September.
The addition in Nigeria’s functional rig in October paid out, in terms of the country’s oil output last month, when compared to what obtained in the preceding months.
Nigeria’s crude oil production rose above one million barrels per day in October 2022, which was the first time since July this year, according to figures from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.
Oil production in Nigeria kept crashing since last year due to massive theft in the Niger Delta, leading to humongous financial losses for the country and the exit of some international oil companies.
It crashed below one million barrels per day in August and September 2022, which were the worst oil production outputs from Nigeria in years.
But in its latest crude oil and condensate production data for October 2022, the upstream regulator stated that the country’s oil production averaged 1,014,485 barrels per day last month.
This indicated an increase of more than 8.18 per cent when compared to what was produced in September 2022, which was 937,766 million barrels per day.
The NUPRC and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had repeatedly stated that efforts were being made to curtail oil theft and ramp up Nigeria’s output of crude.
The Chief Executive, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, recently told journalists in Abuja that the commission was targeting to add about 500,000 barrels of crude oil to Nigeria’s production by getting about 50 per cent of the commodity that was shut-in due to theft.
