Angola Overtakes Nigeria As Africa’s Number One Oil Producing Nation

LATEST statistics from the Organisation of Petro­leum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have shown that Angola has overtaken Ni­geria as Africa’s top oil pro­ducer. Nigeria’s crude oil production fell by 67,000 barrels per day (bpd) last month.
But OPEC, in its Monthly Oil Market Report released in April, put crude oil pro­duction from Nigeria at 1.677 million bpd in March based on direct communi­cation, down from 1.744 million bpd in February.
The country recorded the biggest drop in output in the month among its peers in OPEC, followed by Ven­ezuela, based on direct com­munication.
Exports and production of Nigeria’s popular crude grade Forcados continued to be shut due to a sabotage-related spill on the subsea Forcados pipeline.
The country has recently seen a rise in militant at­tacks in its main oil-produc­ing region, the Niger
Delta, denting oil production.
The country’s production figure for March was put at 1.722 million bpd by sec­ondary sources, compared to 1.762 million bpd the previous month.
According to secondary sources, total OPEC crude oil production in March averaged 32.25 million bpd, a marginal increase of 15,000bpd over the previ­ous month.
The 13-member oil car­tel said in the report that, “crude oil output increased mostly from Iran, Iraq and Angola, while production decreased in UAE, Libya and Nigeria.”
Angola saw its oil output rise to 1.782 million bpd last month from 1.767 mil­lion bpd in February, based on direct communication, according to the OPEC re­port.
The southern African country had in November 2015 overtaken Nigeria in output level as it pro­duced 1.722 million bpd, compared to 1.607 million bpd produced by Nigeria, OPEC’s December report showed.
In its latest monthly re­port, OPEC believes crude supply outside the producer group is set to fall more than expected, with weaker Chinese, Colombian, UK and US oil output eclipsing better outlooks for Canada, Norway, Oman and Russia.
The outlook for non- OPEC supply has been hit largely by lower expecta­tions for crude oil produc­tion from China’s onshore mature fields.
OPEC also cited the post­ponement of major new projects due to reduced cash flow as the impact of lower prices takes its toll.
It now sees output fall­ing by 730,000bpd over the year, up from a previous estimate of 700,000bpd, to average 56.39 million bpd in 2016.