THE Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has affirmed data from Nigeria’s petroleum regulator, reporting that Nigeria’s average daily crude oil production declined to 1.465 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, falling below its quota.

In its monthly crude oil data released on Wednesday, March 12, the OPEC report corroborates the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) data released on Tuesday, March 11.

Both data indicated that Nigeria’s oil production fell below the 1.5 million bpd OPEC quota.

According to OPEC, Nigeria’s crude oil production dropped by 72 million bpd from 1.539 million bpd reported in January.

The oil cartel, at its ministerial meeting on November 30, 2023, set a daily production target of 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) for Nigeria and, in December 2024, extended the quota until 2026.

However, Nigeria has continued to produce below OPEC’s quota, exceeding the target only in January this year.

According to OPEC, its crude oil production figures are based on direct communication with the Nigerian government.

The NUPRC, which regulates the country’s upstream petroleum operations, reported a day earlier that Nigeria’s average daily crude oil production declined by about five per cent in February.

Its data showed that average crude oil production dropped to 1,465,006 bpd in February from 1,538,697 bpd in January, falling below OPEC’s quota of 1.5 million bpd.

“The average crude oil production was 98% of OPEC quota (1.5 Mbps),” NUPRC said.

According to the NUPRC, the figures exclude condensates which OPEC does not include in its calculations of its monthly crude oil report.

But with condensates, the NUPRC data showed daily average production was 1,671,953 in February. It comprises 1,465,006 crude oil and 206,948 condensate barrels of oil per day.

The NUPRC stated further that Nigeria recorded a total production of 41,020,155 barrels of crude oil in February, with 1,599,693  and 4,194,849 barrels of blended and unblended condensates, respectively.

This was below the output in January, when the total production of crude oil was 47,699,593 barrels, excluding 1,910,213 barrels and 4,252,071 barrels in blended and unblended condensates.

Daily average production peaked at 1.7 million and was lowest at 1.6 million in the review month, the NUPRC data added.

Analysts observed that the drop in crude oil quota for February could impact negatively on the 2025 budget implementation.

While presenting the 2025 budget to the National Assembly on December 18, 2024, the president highlighted that the government was targeting N34.8 trillion in revenue to fund the budget of which the bulk of the revenue will come from crude oil proceeds.

He projected that oil revenue would bring in N19.6 trillion while non-oil sources would come in N15.22 trillion.

He set a 2.06 million barrels per day (bpd) crude oil production target at a benchmark rate of $75perr per barrel and adjusted the exchange rate benchmark to N1,500 per dollar.