The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission has released the country’s crude oil and condensate production output for August 2023.

It is a mere 1.181Million barrels of oil per day (MMBOPD) for crude and 1.415Million barrels of crude oil and condensate per day (MMBPD) for both fluids.

The combined crude and condensate output is clearly 200,000Barrels Per day less than the 1.67MMBPD that Mele Kyari, the GCEO of NNPCL, declared in public at the end of August 2023. It so happens that the August 2023 crude oil output figures are a mere 52,035BOPD increase from the July 2023 figure, contrary to the large increase that Mr. Kyar’s statement insinuated.

Indeed 1.181MMBOPD is the third lowest daily average recorded for a month between January 1 and August 31, 2023.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC has published the same figures as NUPRC, apparently by simply receiving data from the regulator, the accredited agency to pronounce on the country’s hydrocarbon output data.

With the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the NNPCL has become a regular commercial entity and no longer the part-regulator, part-policymaker and part-commercial player that it was in the context of the NNPCL Act, which is now defunct. But the NNPCL keeps showing up in the public pronouncing statements it is not legally authorized to and the media, local and international, lap it up and distribute widely.

SOURCE: africaoilandgasreport