By Deborah Nnamdi
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, has set a target of boosting daily production by 2.7 million barrels of crude and condensate by 2027.
This was disclosed by the special adviser on energy, Olu Verheijen in a statement reported by Bloomberg.
She noted that improved security around oil production and transportation sites is the key factor that supports the increase in output.
Verheijen emphasized that the increase will be driven in part by oil condensate, a lighter, more volatile hydrocarbon that allows Nigeria to remain largely within its OPEC+ crude oil quota of 1.5 million barrels per day.
“The OPEC quota does not include condensate. The target we’ve set for ourselves is a combination of condensate and crude,” she said in an interview at an energy conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania last week.
“The idea is to try and demonstrate the capacity for a higher quota as required,”
she stated The special adviser noted that Nigeria’s oil production has risen from a low of 1.1 million bpd in 2022 as the country seeks to boost revenue to address economic challenges like poverty and deteriorating infrastructure.
In December 2024, crude oil production reached 1.67 million barrels per day while 1.48 million barrels were crude.Nigeria is projected to become a net exporter of petroleum products as Aliko Dangote’s refinery scales up production.
According to Verheijen, the removal of fuel subsidies has revitalized the downstream sector, making it commercially viable for the first time in decades.
“What that has done is allowed the downstream, mainstream downstream of that sector to now become commercially viable for the first time in decades,” she said.
She added that investments in refineries are now viable due to improved commercial viability in the downstream sector.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu had pledged to boost Nigeria’s crude oil production from under 1.5 million barrels per day to over 2 million bpd in 2025. However, some experts have dismissed the target as unrealistic.
