The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and its partners operating in the upstream industry have continued to miss the 1.5 million oil production quota given to the county by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the last eight months, Daily Trust reports.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, had last year said the country would demand higher oil production at the November meeting OPEC.
His remark followed an increase in oil production in June and July, which saw the country achieving production of over 1.5 million barrels.
Lokpobiri had then stated that the current quota, pegged at about 1.5 million barrels per day, no longer reflects its true production capacity.
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The country had achieved production of 1.51 mbpd in June and July before falling below the benchmark again in subsequent months.
In August, it dropped to.1.43mbpd and it further went down to 1.39mbpd in September while it increased to 1.40mbpd in October and November saw the production of 1.44mbpd.
It also dropped to 1.42mbpd in December before increasing to 1.46mbpd in January, it further dropped to 1.31mbpd in February before slightly increasing to 1.38mbpd in March.
Why production is unstable - NNPC
But the NNPC in its monthly reports gave reasons for the drop in production.
In November it said the drop was largely due to planned maintenance activities across key assets (Esso-Erha, Stardeep-Agbami, and Renaissance-Estuary Area).
While stating that production will recover at the end of December 2025, it identified continuous delays with WAEP first oil but aimed to complete all 2025 scheduled facilities turn around maintenance (TAM), and production initiatives from JV, PSC, and NEPL assets in readiness for delivering the 2026 production plan.
But in December, it said planned maintenance at Stardeep-Agbami and Renaissance-Estuary facilities, as well as some unplanned production outages, led to a drop in production.
While its January report said production increased, due to the completion of Turn Around Maintenance at Agbami and Renaissance (Estuary Area - EA), it, however, said planned deliveries for January were reduced due to bad weather, evacuation, and asset integrity challenges.
The company is yet to release reports for February and March.
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Operational issues still a challenge in sector - Expert
Speaking with Daily Trust, Prof. Dayo Ayoade, Energy Law expert at the University of Lagos, said there are still some issues in the sector that need to be attended to before production can increase.
He said operational and technical problems like protests, production loss, among others still stifle production.
"We have not conquered crude oil theft and vandalism of infrastructure, despite all the news you get, we still have a lot of problems in the sector.
"More importantly over the longer term, a lot of the onshore pipelines and infrastructure that we have been using have not been replaced or updated, as the IOCs, of course, have divested and left the place.
"So who takes responsibility for this and how much money have they actually put in place to ensure that the infrastructure works seamlessly."
On the goal of the present administration to increase production to 3 million barrels in 2030, he described it as ambitious, adding that it is going to be very difficult even though it is possible.
"But it will require things that we have not been able to do in the past, which is to control crude oil theft and operational losses. So it's the same problem that is recurring."
"Recently the presidency announced the resolution of OML245 dispute, so that this would allow the beginning of investment to get the oil out of the ground. Now the terms have not been made public, but it is interesting that another settlement agreement that happened under President Jonathan resulted in multiple international courts and arbitration disputes, so we have to wait and see, but it's a very ambitious number," he added.
