There are growing concerns over the federal government’s ability to fully implement Nigeria’s almost N55 trillion budget for 2025 as the deficit in the country’s crude oil production benchmark of 2.06 million barrels per day climbed to over 390,000 bpd in February.
Data obtained from both the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) indicated that in February, Nigeria was neither able to meet its OPEC quota of 1.5 million bpd nor move closer to hitting its crude output forecast of over 2 million bpd in this year’s budget.
While OPEC does not compute condensate production, Nigeria has quite a good volume of the commodity and is usually part of its total expected crude oil output in the budget every year.
In all, while Nigeria was supposed to move closer to the 2.06 million crude oil and condensate benchmark in this year’s fiscal document, in February, the country recorded a reduced production of 1.671 million bpd, to increase the output gap.
