OpeOluwani Akintayo
24 July 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, has said it would monitor Nigeria’s crude oil output and ask it to cap once it reaches 1.8 million barrels per day in the coming weeks.
This was revealed after the group met in Russia on Monday.
During the meeting, OPEC with several non-OPEC producers led by Russia, maintained the agreement to cut oil output by a combined 1.8 million barrels per day (b/d) from January 2017 until the end of March 2018.
Before the meeting on Monday, states Libya and Nigeria were exempted from the cap however, the Group’s ministerial committee said it had agreed Nigeria would join the deal by capping or even cutting its output from 1.8 million bpd, once it stabilizes at that level from 1.7 million bpd it attained recently.
Although the cut deal had boosted oil price above $58 a barrel in January however, prices soon slipped to between $45 and $50 range.monitoring
Although the committee, known as John did not say exactly when Nigeria will be asked to cut however, according to Reuters, it said it would track Nigerian production patterns in the next weeks.
The move to ask Nigeria to cap did not happen same way for Libya.
The committee did not ask Libyan to cap as it said its production was unlikely to exceed 1 million bpd in the near future compared to its capacity of 1.4 million-1.6 million bpd before the political unrest in 2011.
Brent oil prices rose about 1 percent at about $48.50, due to news to cap Nigeria and by comments from Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih that the country’s exports would fall to 6.6 million bpd in August as demand at home was rising, effectively representing a cut of 1 million b/d year-on-year.