Nigeria’s oil minister said on Friday that after meeting with oil companies this week he expects to see some improvement in security in the sector, enabling Africa’s top producer to meet its OPEC production quota by the end of August.
Nigeria loses millions of barrels of crude oil a year because of theft and vandalism, underscoring how insecurity causes vast financial losses for the West African country. The President has pledged to ensure that oil theft is stopped and has set up dedicated courts to combat the problem.
This year, the government budgeted 1.8 million barrels per day of production. However, production hit 1.5 million BPD in the first quarter, a shortfall that the government blamed on attacks on oil infrastructure and crude theft.
“For us in Nigeria, we are at a low point. We are not able to meet our OPEC quota,” Oil Minister Timipre Sylva told a media conference but added he expected to do so soon.
“We have given ourselves just about a month to ensure that we can … we believe that by August we would see some security improvement,” he said.