Nigeria’s average daily production of crude oil and condensate rose 2.34 percent to 1,717,030 barrels in September from 1.68 million barrels in August, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission said on Tuesday, with a peak day of 1.84 million barrels during the month. Excluding condensate, crude output averaged 1.53 million barrels a day, 102 percent of the 1.5 million barrel OPEC quota, and the commission said the country met its quota for the fifth month in a row. The lowest daily reading in September was 1.68 million barrels.
The commission attributed the improvement to stable operations across most producing assets and an absence of major pipeline outages, which lifted production uptime and crude evacuation efficiency. The monthly crude run since May reads 1.53 million, 1.55 million, 1.51 million, 1.5 million and now 1.53 million barrels a day: not a surge, but the consistency is the departure for a producer that spent years missing its target. Forcados was the largest terminal at 320,320 barrels a day, followed by Bonny at 303,270.
The government is aiming much higher: output of 3 million barrels a day by 2030, when the regulator expects at least 22 offshore projects capable of unlocking about $50 billion of investment to have started production, supported by tax incentives, a drill-or-drop policy and fiscal reforms meant to revive idle fields.
For the wider market, Nigeria’s streak is one of the few supply bright spots outside the Gulf at a moment when OPEC’s own monthly report shows group output still well below pre-war levels. Reliable Nigerian barrels do not replace lost Hormuz flows, but they are among the increments refiners can actually schedule.