Nigeria’s House of Representatives backed a proposed $54-a-barrel benchmark oil price for the 2015 budget on Thursday, $2 higher than in a budget proposal by the Senate last month but lower than the $65 envisaged in a first draft late last year.
The price is $2 a barrel up from a budget passed by the Senate in February. The Finance Ministry had proposed $65 at the end of last year.
A harmonisation committee will be set up to agree on a final figure for the budget next week.
The slump in global oil prices has hammered Africa’s biggest oil producer. Its currency, the naira, has hit a series of record lows against the dollar in the last three months, breaking through 200 to the greenback last month, despite the central bank burning through billions of dollars of reserves to prop it up.
