Nigeria Reduces Oil Production by 23%

Sunday, 17th May 2020
by Editorial Team

Chinese and Sudanese employees of Great Wall Drilling Company’s rig #136 pulling up the last part of the production pipe string on Unity Field’s well #44, which had stopped producing oil. They suspected either a bad down-hole pump or a bad power line to the pump. Most of the Sudanese employees were northerners, some 70% according to the head man from GWDC, but my estimate is higher, as none of the black drilling crew was Dinka or Nuer, the dominant ethnic groups in the South. The “company man” in charge of the rig for Greater Nile Oil Production Company was an Australian from Darwin, Cameron Wilkins, (private email torquie@gmail.com) who informally estimated the field to be 50% depleted.

Nigeria, Africa’s top crude exporter, has curtailed oil production by 23% to bring the country in line with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) production cuts, according to Reuters.

“The cut for Nigeria is about 417,000 barrels per day (bbl/d), which is about 23% of our production. And of course, as at the end of April, we have complied,” Minister of State for Petroleum Timipre Sylva said.

The OPEC+ deal decreed that output be reduced by 9.7 million barrels per day (mmbbl/d) for May and June as the coronavirus pandemic has slashed demand.

Under the deal, Nigeria should supposedly cap production at 1.41 (mmbbl/d) in May and June.