14 August 2012, Sweetcrude, ABUJA – CHINA has is set to topple the United States of America as largest consumer of Nigeria’s oil, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has said.
Yakubu, wh described China as having assumed the status of alternative market for Nigeria’s crude oil, said this was as a result of dwindling imports by erstwhile major buyer, the United States.
The NNPC boss said at the recent Society of Petroleum Engineers conference in Lagos said: “The decision of the United States is not driven by the fact that they don’t want to buy our oil; they have other issues. The Shale gas has been discovered and it is a major source of energy.
“But of course, the good news is that there are other parts of the world that are interested. As you know, major demand growth is going to come from China and the east. So, that is a very good replacement of whatever shortfall we have with the United States,” he said.
Andrew did not give figures pertaining to China’s imports, but Nigeria’s crude oil export to the United States, which was over one million barrels per day (bpd) in December 2009, had declined to 352,000bpd, representing a loss of about 70 per cent of the United States’ market.
According to statistics, Nigeria was the third-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States in 2010, with the US accounting for 43per cent of Nigeria’s exports.
