Nigeria: Press spotlights plans by Nigeria to renegotiate OPEC oil quota, others

APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The report that the Nigerian Government will renegotiate the country’s production quota in the ongoing OPEC+ cuts by November is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Wednesday.
The Punch reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has said the Federal Government will renegotiate the country’s production quota in the ongoing OPEC+ cuts by November.
The Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, during a live interview with Bloomberg, said the country was working towards ramping up crude oil production by about 200, 000 to 300, 000 barrels per day, latest by October, after which it would push for an increased quota at the next OPEC+ meeting in November.
Kyari said: “OPEC understands that it is not that Nigeria does not have what it takes to produce more crude, but the challenge has been in terms of security, and everything we are doing to combat insecurity in the Niger Delta is working.
“OPEC has now given us (Nigeria) a target to increase production between now and October, and that figure is going to be worked with.
“I think it is very practical to get to between 1.5/1.6 by October.”
Nigeria’s crude oil production, including condensates, was around 1.3 million barrels per day, according to Kyari.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its non-OPEC partner, Russia- also known as the OPEC+ are currently cutting oil exports to boost prices.
The NNPCL boss said the current production is “Nowhere near Nigeria’s capacity. “We have a clear case when during the COVID, we had capacity to do close to 2.1mb/d. So we know we have the capacity.”
“The issues are around the pipeline, and once we are able to resolve the challenges, then, we can produce higher.”
OPEC+ had reduced Nigeria’s quota from 1.742mb/d to about 1.38mb/d in early June due to low production. Kyari said FG was confident it would get an increased quota by November.
The newspaper says that many Nigerian students are facing tough times in the United Kingdom after the naira equivalent of their tuition fees increased by over 60 per cent following the recent move by the Central Bank of Nigeria to unify the nation’s foreign exchange rates.
About two weeks after President Bola Tinubu promised to unify the nation’s multiple exchange rates, the apex bank decided to float the naira at the Investors and Exporters’ Window of the foreign exchange market. Since then, the naira has fallen from N471/dollar to N750/dollar and N589.4/pound to N957.2/pound.
This has led to about 60 per cent increase in tuition fees for students in the UK.
This rise in exchange rate has put more pressure on many Nigerians that are schooling in the UK and beyond.
The UK is one of the destinations of choice for many Nigerians as 128,770 Nigerian students enrolled in universities in the United Kingdom between 2015 and 2022 according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency of the UK.
According to the CBN, study-related foreign exchange outflow to the UK rose to $2.5bn in 2022. Nigerian students and their dependants in the United Kingdom contribute about £1.9bn annually to the UK economy, according to an analysis by SBM Intelligence.
Many of these students may now struggle to pay the balance of their tuition due to the sharp decline in the value of the naira.
The Guardian reports that French Navy and Yaoundé Architecture have reviewed the piracy attack that took place early this year on board the Danish tanker, Monjasa Reformer in Congolese waters.
The move came up at the just-concluded Main Planning Conference (MPC) for Grand African Nemo 2023, held in Châtenay-en-France, France.
The conference had in attendance the Deputy Commander of the Atlantic Maritime Zone (ACZM), Rear Admiral d’Hébrail and Head of the Information and Communications, Yaoundé Interregional Coordination Centre (CIC), Captain Bell Bell.
Also, representatives of Yaoundé Architecture and the 19 navies bordering the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) as well as numerous regional, European and international partners were present.
During the two-day conference, participants took part in an exercise where scenarios, which were as close as possible to the concerns of the riparian states and the maritime safety challenges in the area, were developed and solutions given.
The exercise resulted in multi-faceted solutions that addressed illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, piracy, drug and illicit trafficking, the fight against pollution and legal proceedings.
Also, the French Navy and Yaoundé Architecture have concluded plans to hold the Grand African NEMO 2023 at the Eastern Gulf of Guinea from October 10 to 15, 2023.
The Grand African NEMO is an international operational cooperation exercise designed to help, develop and strengthen maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea by supporting the Yaoundé Process.
The yearly regional exercise will see the participation of countries in the area as well as allied navies in the Gulf of Guinea
Since the Yaoundé summit in 2013, the French Navy has been organising joint African NEMO patrols three or four times a year, in conjunction with the Yaoundé architecture and the navies bordering the Gulf of Guinea.
The newspaper says that the Senate, yesterday, resolved to invite Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, to brief lawmakers on under recovery expenditures and the company’s position on subsidy removal by the current administration.
This came after the adoption of a motion on ‘Need to Investigate Controversial Huge Expenditure on Premium Motor Spirit under the Subsidy/Under Recovery Regime by NNPCL’.
The motion was sponsored by Chinwuba Patrick (Imo East).
The Senate also resolved to “mandate the Committee on Downstream Petroleum Sector (when constituted) to constantly monitor, scrutinise and approve Midstream and Downstream spending of the NNPCL; and “Urge NNPCL, in conjunction with some major international oil companies in Nigeria, to form three different consortiums and build three refineries, one each, to stabilise our oil market, give value to our currency and stabilise our economy”.
Earlier, Chinwuba noted that the Federal Government, in its fight against corruption, bid to plug waste surrounding fuel subsidy, and end the controversial subsidy regime, on May 11, 2016, announced increase in fuel pump price from N87 to between N135 and N145 per litre.
He said at the inauguration of the current government on May 29, 2023, the President took a bold step to announce total removal of fuel subsidy, noting that the scheme “increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor”.
He said: “NNPCL, within the period of subsidy exit attempt, substituted the term ‘subsidy’ with ‘under recovery’ without any recourse to the National Assembly or supervision by any other arm of the government.”
He observed that “while NNPCL, within 10 years (2006 and 2015) claimed about N170 billion as under recovery, the same company, within 13 months (January 2018 to January 2019) claimed N843.121 billion as under recovery.
GIK/APA