Oil Production: Nigeria Exits 2024 On A High, But It’S Still A Struggle

By Macson Obojemuinmoin

Nigeria’s crude oil output in December 2024 was 1,484,585Barrels of oil per day (BOPD), a slight drop from the November 2024 by ~1,000Barrels of Oil per Day. The figure is higher than the October 2024 production by over 150,000BOPD, signaling a continuing end of year uptick. Crude and condensate output for December 2024, was 1,667,560BOPD, compared with 1,690,485BPD in November 2024; condensate output dipped by 22,905BPD from November to December.

What’s noteworthy about the November and December 2024 output, either as oil or both oil and condensate is that they were the highest liquid hydrocarbon production since April 2021.

Still this is a low in historical context; the 2024 (January to December) crude oil and condensate average turns out to be 1, 548,538BPD (or 1.59MMBPD), but the country’s crude oil output alone  in 2020 was 1.828MMBPD and in 2019 it was 2.1MMBPD. Between 1999 and 2020 it had ranged from as ‘low’ as 1.89MMBPD and as high as 2.53MMBPD.

Some of the clearest indications that the country is on a course to bolster hydrocarbon output  include Seplat’s takeover of the assets of Mobil Producing Nigeria, which had not drilled a single well for the last three years, and the finalisation of  the sale of Shell Petroleum Development Company’s operated Oil Mining Leases to Renaissance Africa. But the “surge” that is expected from these events will not happen in a hurry. Shell’s Final Investment Decision to develop Bonga North field as a tie back to the Bonga Main’s FPSO will only bring in the liquids (anticipated peak output of 110,000BOPD) from 2028 at the earliest.

For the second consecutive month, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) published, in its footnote, what it calls the highest and the lowest output in the course of the month. In the footnote for December 2024, it says that “the Lowest and Peak Production in December were 1.57MMBOPD and 1.79MMBOPD respectively”. That footnote is clearly a reference to the argument that erupted in November 2024 over NNPC’s claims that the country produced 1.8MMBPD of crude and condensate and the official figure from the NUPRC turned out to be 1.69MMBPD for that month. The NUPRC doesn’t have to help NNPC clean its act: Simple statistics would indicate that if the average output over the course of 31 days is 1.667MMBPD, a 1.79MMBPD data point would be an extreme outlier, if the lowest figure is 1.57MMBPD. This is, using NUPRC’s own figures.