Crude oil production quota for Nigeria is now 1.77 million barrels per day following agreements reached by members of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

OPEC member countries and their non-OPEC allies had agreed to cut down crude oil production in order to halt the fall in global crude oil prices.

This came as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, told Blomberg TV that Nigeria was ready to make deeper oil cuts if necessary.

He said Nigeria and other members of OPEC were ready to cut crude supplies further if prices continue to tumble.

“Everybody agrees in OPEC that we need to stabilise the market. We cannot allow prices just to plummet,” Sylva stated.

He said that Nigeria was committed to complying fully with its new production quota of 1.774 million barrels a day, having over-produced in August.

Sylva said Nigeria would cut down in September, adding that the country would fully comply this month.

Nigeria is currently pumping 1.69 million barrels a day amid a pipeline outage, but averages about two million barrels a day when producing at full capacity. 2020 budget estimates were based on crude oil production of about 2 million barrels per day.

OPEC member countries and their allies, collectively known as OPEC+, are due to meet in Vienna in early December.

Their current agreement for production cuts totalling 1.2 million barrels a day expires at the end of March.

The minister said the country was not expecting any significant capacity from new projects in the short term.

Punch