The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited says the country’s crude oil production level (including condensate) is currently at 1.67 million barrels per day (bpd).
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The Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mr. Mele Kyari, disclosed this at the media briefing by the Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, in Abuja.
“May I also use this opportunity to say that I was just checking the data for Wednesday. The actual data for crude oil and condensate production is at 1.67 million barrels per day.
“This is substantial, if you look at the situation where we were almost going below a million barrels some months ago. This is quite substantial. And the connection of this to subsidy was that you cannot give what you do not have.”
Kyari said NNPC was at the point of default at the time President Bola Tinubu took over on May 29, 2023.
He said the national oil company “was facing imminent illiquidity”.
“This is because we keep carrying the subsidy burden, the federation, that is all the sub-nationals and federal government, are unable to pay their bills for the subsidy,” he explained
“That means NNPC was carrying the subsidy burden for the whole federation until it became very obvious by the time Mr. President took over that it is no longer possible to proceed because you do not have the cash to pay for it and NNPC could potentially go into negative cash flow. Another word for it is bankruptcy”.
“You do not have and at that point in time, the subsidy burden was about N400 billion every month. And if the situation had continued, I can tell you in today’s market condition, pricing in the market and also the FX regime, we would have been dealing with close to N1 trillion of subsidy every month at this point in time.
Mele Kyari, also disclosed that the nation’s fuel consumption has declined by 30 per cent following the removal of petrol subsidy by President Bola Tinubu.
He said the reduction in fuel demand from about 66.7 million litres daily before the removal of subsidy to about 46 million currently also meant a 30 percent reduction in NNPCL’s demand for foreign exchange to import fuel.
