Oil price increases to $40, Nigeria cuts oil production to 216, 000 barrels per day

World crude oil price increased on Wednesday at Brent crude, the Nigerian oil benchmark at which it is priced, rose to $40 dollar per barrel for the time being since the beginning of March.

Brent crude saw a rise by 1.1 percent, to $40 dollar per barrel as of 2:52 GMT.

This came about as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, announced that Nigeria’s adherence to the crude oil production cuts that was agreed by members and non members OPEC has reached 52%.

In his tweeter account, Sylva said that Nigeria has joined its other OPEC+ members in April 2020 to put into effect the agreement to cut oil production to 9.7 million barrels of crude daily.

He said that the decision was made to cushion the effects of the Covid19 pandemic.

He noted that Nigeria has shown its willingness to adhere to the stated agreement and will surely continue to do so.

Recently the NNPC data has shown that, Nigeria reduced its current production in May 2020 to 1.613million bpd. The different between its reference production of 1.892 million bpd with its May production figures which is 216 thousand bpd.

He mentioned that this indicates 52% compliance as opposed to the 19% reported by Thompson Reuters.

Sylva said that it is important to note the figures reported by TR which include Agbami and Akpo condensate streams which are classified as condensates in other words excluding quota purposes.

The Minister said that the country’s current crude oil production has dropped, which is as a result of showing the high level of compliance being strictly adhered to as regards the OPEC+ oil production agreement cuts.

He said it is important to note that the daily crude oil production is well below the period commitment level of 1.412 million barrels per day and will show its full compliance by the end of June 2020.

He concluded that, Nigeria will continue to fully comply with the said agreement and look forward to improving on the level of compliance for the duration of this historic intervention by OPEC + members and non OPEC members, who have working round the clock to ensure that global oil prices increase.