Nigeria’s government has set a new, significantly higher, production target for the national oil company, aiming for 2.5 million barrels daily by the end of this year.

"When the new NNPC management visited me, I increased their oil production target to 2.5 million bpd from the initial two million barrels given to them by the President," Nigeria’s petroleum resources minister, Heineken Lokpobiri told the Sun on the sidelines of the Oil Technology Conference Africa Energy Forum.

Lokpobiri believes the new target would be easy to hit based on the fact that Nigeria reached the same level of production during the pandemic despite the lack of any targeted investments in oil production growth.

"The 2.5 million bpd oil production is easily realisable because all the bottlenecks against our oil production are being addressed," the official said.

Production data shows Nigeria has not produced oil at a rate of 2 million bpd in the past decade, with the peak at close to that figure back in 2016. Since then, production has been in a more or less gradual decline. Pipeline vandalism and oil theft are two reasons for this, as they discourage additional investments that are much needed for a reversal in production trends. Another reason has been Big Oil strategy that has seen the supermajors curb their presence in Nigeria in favor of other locations with better prospects.

However, Exxon just made a decision to invest $1.5 billion in deepwater oil development in Nigeria. The investment will be made between 2025 and 2027 to revitalize production in the Usan deepwater oilfield, Nigeria’s Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission said this week.

According to Lokpobiri, the problems of pipeline vandalism and oil theft in the Niger Delta are also being addressed, which should facilitate production growth. This just leaves one problem: OPEC+ production control commitments. In this, Nigeria is in luck as Saudi Arabia recently reversed its course, switching from production control to growth.