The Minister for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has petitioned the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies for an increased oil quota, saying production struggles would soon be fixed.
Sylva attributed Nigeria’s production struggles to technical problems from re-tapping reservoirs that had been shuttered to comply with the stringent OPEC+ cuts of the past 17 months.
He said output could rebound to around 1.7 million barrels per day by November and two million barrels per day by the end of the year.
“We had some issues from shutting down the reservoirs,” he was quoted as saying by S&P Global Platts.
“When you shut down a reservoir, to restart it, sometimes there are challenges,” he added.
The minister reportedly made the statement at the Gastech 2021 conference in Dubai, according to S&P Global Platts.
The current quota allowed by OPEC+ covering crude oil and condensate is 1.61 million barrels per day for September and is scheduled to rise by roughly 17,000 barrels per day every month.
Sylva explained that the country’s full production capacity of about 2.2 million barrels per day should be reflected in a revised quota.
He said, “We’ve just put a request on the table, and we expect that to be looked at.
“We have capacity for more production than we are producing right now. Unfortunately, we are constrained by the quota.”
It was also reported that the production of key Nigerian grade, Forcados, had been disrupted for almost a month until Shell Petroleum Development Company lifted force majeure on loadings on September 10.
Industry sources reportedly said the suspension of exports was due to an oil spill near the Forcados terminal.
Other Nigerian crudes such as Bonny Light, Escravos, and Qua Iboe have also faced production issues in recent months due to operational and technical reasons.
