Page 7 - AfrOil Week 40 2019

AfrOil PERFORMANCE AfrOil
Nigerian minister of state comments on compliance with OPEC quotas
NIGERIA
In the meantime, he said, Nigeria does not expect to bring any major new fields on stream in the near future. The only anticipated increases will come from sites that are cur- rently idle because of ongoing legal disputes, he reported.
The minister went on to say that his country was prepared to join OPEC in making further reductions to oil output in the event that world prices remained weak. He did not say how much Nigeria was willing to cut but expressed support for the organisation’s efforts to main- tain global petroleum markets in balance.
“Everybody agrees in OPEC that we need to stabilise the market,” he told Bloomberg TV. “We cannot allow prices just to plummet.”™
Minister of State Timipre Sylva
NIGERIA’S Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva said last week that his country was determined to meet its obligations as a member of OPEC by complying with the group’s oil production quotas.
He acknowledged that Nigeria had extracted more crude oil in the month of August than specified in its quota, which OPEC has fixed at 1.774mn barrels per day (bpd). But he insisted that the country intended to make up the dif- ference. Nigeria did cut production in Septem- ber and will remain fully in compliance in the month of October, he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Currently, he added, Nigeria is producing oil at the rate of 1.69mn bpd. Output is below the level of the OPEC quota because of a pipeline outage, he explained.
Sylva also stated that Nigerian authorities would remain in contact with OPEC to ensure that new development programmes did not lead the country to violate its commitments to the group. Officials in Abuja will meet with OPEC representatives to determine whether production from Egina, a new field that is turn- ing out 200,000 bpd of liquids, should be classi- fied as crude oil, which would be subject to the quota, or condensate, which would be exempt.
INVESTMENT
Libya’s NOC demands – and receives – crucial state funding
LIBYA
THE head of Libya’s National Oil Corp. (NOC) said recently that the company needed more money to head off a steep decline in produc- tion. The North African country is currently extracting around 1.3mn barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil.
Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of NOC, urged the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) to release LYD1.5bn ($1.06bn) in funds that have already been allo- cated to the company. Without the money, he said, NOC will not be able to sustain oil output at current levels and will see yields drop precip- itously over the next nine months.
“If the corporation’s allocations are not released without delay, Libyan oil production will be hundreds of thousands of barrels per
day lower than it should be,” Sanalla said in a statement dated October 3. “That will have an extremely negative effect on national income.”
The chairman did not say exactly how much production might fall, but his efforts do seem to have been successful.
On October 5, GNA representatives said Tripoli had made arrangements to disburse all of the money to NOC. They shared a document with reporters stating that the internationally recognised government was making LYD1.2bn ($848mn) available “for projects that contribute in maintenance of current production rates and increase the productive capacity of the oil and gas sector” and another LYD300mn ($212mn) available to cover NOC’s obligations to other firms.
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Week 40 09•October•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m
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