Nigeria has lost nothing less than 120 million barrels of crude oil from January and September this year amidst revenue crisis.

The level of crude oil loss in production translates to 12.6 billion dollar going by crude oil production data obtained from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC.

While Nigeria had proposed a budget of 20.5 trillion naira in 2023 with the feasibility of relying heavily on borrowing amidst the country’s debt crisis, the $12.6 billion loss from the oil production would have provided a quarter of what is needed to finance the budget.

Infrastructure issues, pipeline leaks and oil theft have squeezed Nigerian output this year, leaving the country consistently below its OPEC+ crude targets.

Nigeria’s own submission to the OPEC Secretariat put September crude output at just 938,000 barrel per day, just over half its quota for the month, while total liquids production was only 1.14mn b/d, according to the NUPRC.

Notwithstanding the challenges, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, is hopeful the country’s oil production will rebound to 1.8million barrel per day by the end of the year and to increase further in 2023.