Sopuruchi Onwuka
24 October 2005
Lagos — NIGERIA'S oil and condensate output will soon go up as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC says it will increase its production capacity by 5.5 million barrels per day by the year 2009.
The country's oil export figures although suffering severe production capacity limitations is also subject to OPEC's quota allocation which guides member's output to hold them from pumping down export prices.
But with the plan by the group to hike production in the next three years new oilfield development projects undertaken by oil majors in the may now be put to production as soon as they are completed.
Agency sources OPEC Secretary General Adnan Shihab-Eldin disclosed the plan at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum on energy and mining in this southeastern city.
"Combined with a plan to increase production from OPEC from 32.5 million barrels a day to 38 million barrels a day by the year 2009 and an additional 1.5 million barrels a day of National Gas Liquids coming also from OPEC over the same period ... accumulative world oil production capacity (including non-OPEC countries) will rise by around 12 million barrels a day over that period," he said.
"This will be, in our opinion, above the expected cumulative rise in demand over that period which is estimated to be around seven to eight million barrels a day. "This will be more than enough to cover the forecast growth in demand," he added.
OPEC said on Monday that its 11 members, which jointly supply more than a third of global oil, had produced 30.34 million bpd on average during September, an increase of 130,000 bpd from August.
Noting a decline in production growth in non-OPEC countries, OPEC said these producers, led by Russia, would produce an average 50.3 million bpd this year, slightly less than a previous estimate of 50.4 million bpd.
Following his meeting with his South Korean host, Shihab-Eldin urged oil consuming countries to expand refining facilities quickly to fight high energy prices.
He stressed there is spare crude available to be turned into products. OPEC would continue making efforts to reassure the market that crude is always available, he said, adding that high oil prices were not justified in light of economic fundamentals.
"It's very clear that currently, the market is well supplied with crude but the problem is that we don't have a refining system that can take all of the crude that is available," Shihab-Eldin told reporters.
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