OpeOluwani Akintayo
06 April 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos — Crude oil production in member countries of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC dropped by 170,000 barrels per day in March, a new survey by Bloomberg has shown.
According to the survey, the output slum brings the group’s production to 32.04 million barrels per day (b/d), making it the lowest daily production rate since April 2017, when it pumped 31.9 million b/d.
OPEC and its partners had agreed to cut production by 1.8mbpd since January 2017.
The agreement called Declaration of Cooperation, DoC, as at February had recorded a 138 percent compliance among the group, Russia inclusive.
The drop was boosted by fall in Venezuela’s production, shedding another 100,000 b/d in March.
Venezuela pumped 1.51 million b/d last month, versus its OPEC quota of 1.97mb/d.
The country’s cumulative cut as of March stood at 557,000 b/d, as against a pledge cut of just 95,000 b/d.
Another country which contributed to the fall was Algeria whose output dropped by 40,000 b/d to 1 million b/d as field maintenance season kicked in.
Libya’s production also slide by below 1 million b/d on field outages.
As usual, Saudi Arabia continued to pump less than it had pledged to, with the daily average falling by another 10,000 b/d last month to 9.87 million b/d.
In comparison, Russia’s production hit the highest in 11 months in March, at 10.97mb/d, still almost in line with its pledge to OPEC, which was for a cut of 300,000 bpd from its November 2016 average daily of 11.247 million b/d.
According to data from the In the Energy Information Administration, production in the United States’ daily crude production averaged 10.398mb/d in March.
