Oil production cut may not affect Nigeria at OPEC meeting
Nigeria’s crude oil production is still below the production quota by OPEC, which makes it impossible to be part of the cut agreement for next year, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu has said.
Speaking shortly before the commencement of the 173rd meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, today in Vienna, Kachikwu said the country’s production level is around 1.7 to 1.75 which is below the 1.85 production target set for the country by the group.
He said the agitation by the militant in recent time was due to information deficits on the things that the federal government is doing in the region.
“We are fulfilling the promises, but the reality is that some of the promises made by government take time, if you want to build a modular refinery, it takes between 24 to 36 months, if you want to open a university it takes at least one year, so government is making its promises, it’s just that the expectation is very high.”
“What I am doing now, is going round to sign MoU with the communities so that to be very sure of what the deliverables are, what time frame and what are those things they suppose to deliver for themselves.”
“I believe that in terms of the promises we have made, we have already approved the university, the staffing is going on right now, so technically we made it.”
The policy on Modular refineries is there , but we need to have investors to build that, the Ogoni cleanup is ongoing, about $1bn is coming from the joint ventures partners, they put preliminary amount which we kick-started the project, they are going to pay in three years the balance but we need to have a transparent way of releasing such funds so that we will not get back into another financial scandal.”
“So what we need now is to bridge the information gap, because these are not things that you can achieve overnight.”
On the likely outcome of the meeting, Kachikwu assured that Nigeria will continue to support any decision by OPEC to stabilise the market.
