Saudi Arabia and Nigeria had the biggest decline in crude oil production under the umbrella of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
This is according to a Reuters survey.
Reuters reports that in the month of July 2023, OPEC oil output fell after Saudi Arabia made an additional voluntary cut as part of the OPEC+ producer group’s latest agreement to support the market.
Meanwhile, there was a crude production outage recorded earlier in the month of July which affected the general crude production rate for Nigeria.
According to Reuters, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pumped 27.34 million barrels per day (bpd) in July 2023, which is down 840,000 barrels per day from June 2023, the lowest for OPEC since September 2021.
Reuters also pointed out that there were increases in Iraq and Angola.
Nigerian outage in July 2023
Recall that Nairametrics reported on July 15, that the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Limited suspended loadings of Nigeria’s Forcados crude oil due to a suspected leak at the export terminal.
According to the report, SPDC confirmed that 200,000 barrels per day of crude oil exports were halted as a result of this incident.
On July 12, some workers observed a sheen near the single buoy mooring facility, prompting the suspension of activities in order to conduct investigations.
Oil sheen refers to a film with shiny rainbow colour that appears on the surface of the water due to oil or gasoline spilt.
The previous performance of Forcados
Prior to the outage, data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) shows that since January 2023, the Forcados terminal crude oil production output ranged between 5 to 7 million barrels of crude oil production per month, experiencing slight decreases in March and April 2023.
The Forcados terminal, which is located in Delta state, increased its crude oil and condensates production to 7,006,778 in May 2023 from 5,783,707 recorded in April 2023.
What you should know
In June 2023, OPEC monthly oil market report data revealed Nigeria as the top crude oil producer for the month.
The report stated that direct communication data showed that of the top four crude oil producers in Africa; Nigeria produced 1, 249 million barrels of crude oil per day, and Libya produced 1,186 million barrels of crude oil per day.
Meanwhile, Angola produced 1,119 million barrels per day and Algeria produced 953K barrels per day in June 2023.
Bear in mind that Gabriel Aduda, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources has said that steps have been taken to ensure that the country produces 1.7 million barrels per day by the end of the year (2023).
