The oil explosion in Saudi Arabia may turn out be of tremendous benefit to Nigeria despite the fact that the country imports most of her refined products.
Before the incident, Nigeria had agreed to cut it excess supply to the global market by 57,000 bpd at a meeting in Abu Dhabi last week ahead of their policy discussions in Vienna in December. This, analysts say, will no longer happen.
Nigeria’s production averages 1,957.500 barrels per day, while what it used to service imported products is about 445,000 barrels per day, which was supposed to be refined by the refineries in the countries.
Industry operators said that with the global market losing about five million barrels of crude a day, it would be an opportunity for a country like Nigeria that is already being accused of overproduction to use it to help mitigate the effect of the vacuum created by the Saudi incident.
They said even though the incident will impact the price of crude oil and by extension prices of refined products, which the country imports massively, the impact on refined products they say would be marginal when compared to the revenue that would accrue from crude oil that would be exported to the global market.
According to Diran Fawibe, chairman and chief executive officer of International Energy Services (IES), this is an opportunity for those countries that shave pare capacity to pump more into the market and Nigeria is not an exception.
