Nigeria’s Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu has said he was “not ruffled” by the recent oil price decline.
Instead he wants the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, member nations to focus on their production costs.
“OPEC needs to just focus on itself and focus on what it needs to do and forget what is happening in shale. Every OPEC producer must work hard to be a least-cost producer,” he said.
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Oil prices were trading at $64.40 per barrel on Thursday, just over nine per cent below the highs this year above $71 per barrel reached in January
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil exporter, produces 2.07 million barrels per day (bpd), including 1.71 million bpd of crude and 362,000 bpd of condensates, a ministry spokesman said.
Nigeria is also a member of OPEC.
OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of 14 nations as of May 2017, founded in 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela), and headquartered since 1965 in Vienna.
As of 2016, the 14 countries accounted for an estimated 44 per cent of global oil production and 73 per cent of the world’s “proven” oil reserves, giving OPEC a major influence on global oil prices that were previously determined by American-dominated multinational oil companies.
