Nigeria is working to restore losses in oil production because of militant attacks on some pipelines, the country's finance minister said yesterday.
Over the last eight months, Nigeria's oil production has dropped 600,000 barrels a day to 1.9 million barrels from a projected 2.5 million barrels because of the attacks and violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, Finance Minister Nenadi Usman said.
"Work on the broken pipelines is in progress. There is going to be some increase in production soon," Usman told reporters on the sidelines of a summit of the World Bank and IMF in Singapore.
Central bank Governor Charles Soludo said he expected the pipelines to be repaired "in weeks to months," but gave no timeframe.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, ranks fifth among crude suppliers to the US.
Kidnapping of oil workers and sabotage of pipelines are common in the Niger Delta. Despite the region's oil wealth, underdevelopment and government corruption mean most of the inhabitants remain mired in poverty. Dozens of expatriate workers have been held hostage by a variety of militant groups so far this year.
Usman also allayed concerns that her country's growing engagement with China on the oil front, could slow Nigeria's exports to the US.
"We used to supply 10 percent of the US requirement. We still do that," she said, when asked if a recent agreement with the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) group to double Nigeria's crude oil exports to China would hurt supplies to the US. "Our agreement with China is a separate issue."
Under the deal, Sinopec, will receive 100,000 barrels per day.
China has taken a keen interest in Africa's oil and minerals as its economy heads into a fourth year of 10 percent growth. Earlier this year, Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Oil prices have retreated from record highs reached earlier this year. Yesterday, benchmark oil prices inched past the US$64 a barrel in Asia on the news that output at a huge BP PLC platform in the Gulf of Mexico would not be restored until mid-2008 at the earliest.
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