Nigeria’s oil reserves now stand at 37billion – NUPRC

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) says as of January 1, 2023, the country’s oil and condensate reserves stood at 36.966 billion barrels.

This represents 31.060 billion barrels of oil and 5.906 billion barrels of condensate.

Gbenga Komolafe, the NUPRC Chief Executive, said at the sixth edition of the Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES 2023) with the theme, “Global Perspective for a Sustainable Energy Future,” that the associated gas reserves were at 102.32 Trillion Cubic Feet (TCF) while Non-Associated Gas reserves was 106.51 TCF, making a total of 208.83 TCF of natural gas reserves.

The oil and condensate reserves declined by about 0.22 percent compared to January 1, 2022, adding that the figures were attributable to low exploration activities and reserve revisions arising from subsurface studies in 2022.

On the other hand, the slight increase of 0.10 percent in gas reserves over Jan. 1, 2022 reserves position was primarily attributed to the revisions arising from additional information from new wells, and field development studies.

“The Commission, empowered by the PIA, has continued to drive the upstream industry’s performance to grow reserves through deliberate oil and gas exploration, deep drilling, prospects maturation, appraisal, field studies and improved oil recovery.

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“Our efforts are beginning to manifest in our gas reserves position, and we expect a similar manifestation in oil reserves in the very short term,” he said.

According to Komolafe, as a country, Nigeria boasts of 37.064 billion barrels of oil with a daily production of over 1.5 million barrels of oil.

He said in terms of reserves, Nigeria ranked second in Africa, eighth in Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 11th in the World.

He said the country ranked first in Africa, sixth in OPEC and fifteenth in the World in terms of crude oil production.

“It is interesting to note that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for Nigeria stands at 1,998 dollars, which ranks her at 12th position amongst the OPEC member states and 22nd in Africa.

“Although crude oil contributes over 85 per cent to Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, its contribution to GDP is about 6.33 per cent, while Algeria’s is 10.2 percent, Angola is 30 percent and Libya at over 50 per cent.

“Nigeria is a nation where needs meet opportunity,” Komolafe said.

Aside from the catalogued hydrocarbon potential, he said Nigeria was blessed with potential for blue energy, solar, wind, biomass as well as other sources of renewable energy to leverage the right energy mix in the energy transition regime.