Nigeria Loses 1m Barrels Per Day, Says Lukman

Nigeria is still counting the losses inflicted by militancy in the Niger Delta, with the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, revealing that the country is losing an average of one million barrels of crude oil per day because of the crisis.

This is one of the very few occasions when the estimate of Nigeria’s production shut-in has been made public by a top government official.

Briefing members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Working Committee (NWC) in Abuja yesterday, Lukman said that owing to the Niger Delta crisis which is a major challenge to his ministry, oil production had dropped to between 1.4mbpd and 1.5mbpd, against the budget benchmark of 2.2mbpd.

This Day