Nigeria Urged to Get New Buyers As UAE Exit Threatens Oil Market Stability

By Peter Uzoho

The Chairman of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), Mr Wole Ogunsanya, has called on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) and other oil producers in the country to urgently develop markets for Nigerian crude outside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota system.

Ogunsanya argued that this would enable the country to cushion the impact of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)'s exit from OPEC and to secure supply for its growing domestic refining capacity, which he said would hit 1 million barrels per day soon.

The PETAN chair made the call while speaking to journalists at the just-concluded Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) 2026, in Houston, Texas, United States.

"When OPEC gives you a quota, it's left for you to find who is going to buy it. And we have one of the best crude oil in the world. So we need NNPC and all producers to market Nigerian production," he said.

Reliability, he added, is critical to retaining buyers, saying: "If they don't have it, it doesn't matter how good our crude oil is, how sweet it is, they want reliability and they'll go somewhere else to find that crude."

He said the UAE's departure would disrupt the supply-demand balance OPEC and OPEC+ have maintained for years.

"The decision by the UAE, which they have a sovereign right to do, is for their country's interest. Our opinion is that it's going to cause a dislocation of that equilibrium, the ability of OPEC and OPEC+, to manage the price of oil," Ogunsanya said.

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