Nigeria regains top position as Africa’s largest oil producer

Nigeria has regained its top position as Africa’s largest oil producer, pushing Angola who happened to have led the African oil producing countries with its 1.7 million barrels of crude oil a day, well above Nigeria’s 1.5 million barrels per day, in September 2016, for seven straight months to the second position.

According to the December 2016 Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) of the OPEC, crude oil production from Nigeria went a notch above that of Angola even before the start of 2017 as per the planned production cut agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC producers.

National Daily gathered from OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) that in November, Nigeria and Angola produced 1.692 million barrels of oil apiece. Similarly, according to the information from primary sources in the MOMR, Nigeria produced 1.782 million barrels of oil against Angola’s 1.688 million barrels to demonstrate its takeover of Angola by about 94,000 barrels per day in December.

Earlier in 2016 when Nigeria lost its position as Africa’s largest oil producer, a major decline was seen in its output, which was about 1.677 million barrels against Angola’s 1.782 million barrels then. This development was because of simultaneous attacks on the Nigerian oil infrastructure by militants in the Niger Delta.

This led to the decline in the country’s daily oil production by about 700,000 barrels per day, as reported by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in July, and also confirmed by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu. But, in June 2016, crude oil production in Nigeria rose to 1.77 million barrels per day due to completion of repairs coupled with no new major attacks since mid-June 2016.