Nigeria will join OPEC cut deal if….

The Minister for Petroleum, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has said Nigeria will join OPEC’s oil cut output if its production reaches 1.8 million barrels per day.

The minister made the statement in a Bloomberg Television interview from Rome on Wednesday.
Since December 2016, crude oil prices have been struggling to hit $60 per barrel which is the expectation of most oil-reliant economies.

Kachikwu said he believed oil will climb by about $10 in the coming months.
“Ultimately, the effects over the next few months will get us to where we want to be, which is in the mid-$60s,” he said.

Oil prices climbed at the end of November and in early December after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced that it will cut output.

However, Nigeria was left out of the cut deal because of attacks on its oil and gas pipelines by militants in the Niger Delta.

However, Kachikwu said OPEC could still ask Nigeria for its participation in the cut deal.
Nigeria is putting everything in place, including the refineries, in order to boost production as it recovers from the attacks, which targeted pipelines and other infrastructure.

The nation now produces about 1.5 million barrels a day and the government is improving its engagement with communities in the Niger Delta as it seeks to increase production, said Kachikwu, who is in Italy meeting the nation’s energy minister as well as the chief executive officer of Eni Spa.

Once crude oil production returns to about 1.8 million barrels a day, “then we’ll begin to look at OPEC asking us to do some cuts,” he said.

Kachikwu said that while Nigeria “probably will struggle” to reach that output level, the country would eventually join the cuts if production rises high enough.

“There’s a willingness of every OPEC member to contribute,” he said.