OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — European countries topped the number of crude oil exports from Nigeria in 2018.
Data from OPEC’s Annual Statistics Bulletin for 2019, showed that Nigeria shipped a total of 1,058 million barrels of crude oil per day to Europe in 2018.
The trend has been consistent for the past five years. In 2014, Europe ordered the highest from Nigeria at 968 thousand barrels per day. It grew to 992 thousand barrels per day in 2015. In 2016, it dropped to 692 barrels per day, while in 2018, 692 barrels per day was ordered.
Next on the list of destinations for Nigeria’s crude oil in 2018, was North America, with 172 thousand barrels of crude oil per day, and Asia and Pacific ranking third on the list with 387 thousand barrels per day of crude oil imports.
Latin America with 52 thousand barrels of crude oil per day ranked fourth, while African countries came fifth with the import of 309 thousand barrels per day of crude oil.
According to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC’s latest ASB, Middle East countries had stopped importing for the past five years, except for 2017 when the continent ordered 2.5 million barrels per day.
Total barrels of crude oil exported by Nigeria to the six continents per day in 2018 totaled 7,371 million barrels.