In May 2024, Nigeria’s total oil production increased by 1.45% to reach 1.46 million barrels per day, from 1.44 million barrels per day in April.
This marginal gain still falls short of the country’s OPEC quota of 1.5 million barrels per day and the 1.7 million barrels per day benchmark set for the 2024 national budget.
The latest figures from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) contradict claims by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited CEO, Mr Mele Kyari, that oil production had reached 1.7 million barrels per day in April.
The country failed to meet the target level in May, with an output of 1.25 million barrels per day of crude oil production and 217,076 barrels per day of condensate production.
This development highlights the challenges facing Nigeria’s oil sector, despite efforts to increase production and meet global demand.
NUPRC data shows that oil production in the first five months of the year has so far failed to improve significantly.
Production in January was 1.64 million barrels per day, February 1.54 million barrels per day, and March, 1.43 million barrels per day.
On a year-on-year basis, total production in May rose slightly by 2.6% compared to the 1.43 million barrels per day recorded over a similar period in 2023.
As part of efforts to grow the nation’s reserves and improve oil production, the NUPRC has announced it will put additional oil fields on offer in the ongoing oil field licensing bid round.
The Commission Chief Executive, Engr Gbenga Komolafe, disclosed this while unveiling the Nigerian 2024 licensing round in Lagos, stating that the government is committed to conducting the licensing round in a fair, competitive, and transparent manner.
According to him, “the Commission, in partnership with its multi-client partners, has acquired more geological data resulting in the identification of more prospective blocks. The newly identified blocks will be added to the pool of blocks originally scheduled for the bid exercise, and their details will be made available on the bid round portal.
“In addition to these blocks, the seven deep offshore blocks from the 2022 Mini-Bid Round Exercise which cover an area of approximately 6,700 km2 in water depths of 1,150m to 3,100m shall also be concluded along with this Licensing round”.
He further explained that the “blocks on offer have extensive 2D and 3D seismic data coverage, including multi-beam and analog data. Additionally, a 3D reprocessed Pre-stack Time Migration of remarkable quality is also available to prospective bidders. The availability of advanced seismic datasets and analytical tools via our dedicated portals exemplifies our commitment to excellence and technological advancement.
“The Licencing Round is indeed expected to be a huge success for Nigeria and is a big step towards growing the nation’s oil and gas reserves through aggressive exploration and development efforts, boosting production, expanding opportunities for gas utilisation and end to end development across the value chain, strengthening energy security and economy, providing occasion to gainfully engage the pool of competent companies in the oil & gas sector with multiplier effect in employment opportunities, enabling transfer of technology, value optimisation from our petroleum assets and attracting investments.
“In addition, the Licencing Round presents us with the opportunity to reinforce Nigeria’s commitment to openness and transparency in line with the principles of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI)”, he added.

Alleluia is the Assistant Editor and Content Writer at LagosPost.ng. She is a prolific writer and editor, she has written features and news stories on Lifestyle, Sports, Business, Politics and B2B marketing. She is also an event coordinator, host and social media content creator.