THE price of Nigeria’s Bonny Light, yesterday, bounced back to $95.63 per barrel, from $93 per barrel, as Russian troops moved into Ukraine, thus signalling instability and an era of high oil prices.
The price of Brent, usually used to benchmark other prices, had earlier risen to $99 per barrel, weekend, and was expected to be followed by other crudes, including Bonny Light.
READ ALSO:Oil sector contributes N1.055trn to GDP, down 3.68pts
However, at the current price of $95.63 per barrel, Nigeria has recorded excess revenue of $33.63 per barrel Against the 2022 budgeted benchmark price of $62 per barrel and 1.8 million barrels per day, including Condensate.
The increasing crude oil price is however negative to the Nigerian economy as the subsidy regime is set to escalate beyond the estimated N2.3 trillion in 2022.
Moreover, the country might not be able to maximise the positive price trend due to its inability to produce the targeted volume at the backdrop of sustained pipeline vandalism and oil theft in the Niger Delta.
In its February 2022 Monthly Oil Market Report, MOMR, obtained by Vanguard, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, put Nigeria’s January 2022 oil output at 1.399 million barrels per day, mb/d.
This output, which excluded Condensate, showed that the nation recorded an under-production of about 302,000 barrel per day, compared to its 1.701 mb/d OPEC quota.
Nevertheless, the inability of Nigeria and other OPEC members to meet their quotas has constrained the organisation from meeting its collective quota, thus causing oil prices to head toward $100 per barrel.
Last month, OPEC, and its allies, popularly known as OPEC+, had suffered a production shortfall of 190,000 barrels per day, bpd
