Crude oil production: We’ve reached 1.8m barrels per day – NNPCL

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, and its partners have increased crude oil and gas production to 1.8 million barrels per day and 7.4 billion standard cubic feet.

The NNPCL announced this at a press briefing on Thursday, saying the feat was achieved in compliance with the mandate of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, while speaking on the development, congratulated the Production War Room Team that anchored the production recovery process.

“The team has done a great job in driving this project of not just production recovery but also escalating production to expected levels that are in the short and long terms, acceptable to our shareholders based on the mandates that we have from the President, the Honourable Minister, and the Board,” Kyari explained.

While giving the breakdown of the efforts of the Production War Room, the Chief War Room Coordinator and Senior Business Adviser to the Group Chief Executive Officer, Lawal Musa, revealed that the feat was achieved through the collaborative efforts of Joint Venture and Production Sharing Contract partners, the Office of the National Security Adviser, as well as government and private security agencies.

According to him, the interventions that led to the recovery of production cut across every segment of the production chain with security agencies closely monitoring the pipelines.

Musa stated that when the Production War Room team was inaugurated on the 25th of June 2024, production was at 1.430mbpd, but the team swung into action, culminating in sustaining the production recovery to 1.7mbpd in August and hitting the current 1.808mbpd in November.

“We are confident that with this same momentum and with the active collaboration of all stakeholders, especially on the security front, we can see the possibility of getting to 2mbpd by the end of the year,” he said.

On his part, the Chairman of the NNPC Ltd. Board of Directors, Pius Akinyelure, said he was happy to be part of the production recovery process.

He charged NNPCL’s management to come up with a cash flow projection based on the new production figures to facilitate planning; stressing that he was looking forward to further production increase to 3mbpd.

The Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, expressed satisfaction with the performance of the team, pledging the Federal Government’s support for the company to do more.