The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) says the country’s oil and condensate reserves, as of January 1, stand at 36.966 billion barrels. This represents 31.060 billion barrels of oil and 5.906 billion barrels of condensate.

NUPRC’s chief executive, Gbenga Komolafe, said this at the sixth edition of the Nigeria International Energy Forum (NIEF 2023).

Mr Komolafe said the associated gas reserves were 102.32 trillion cubic feet while non-associated gas reserves were 106.51 TCF, totalling 208.83 TCF of natural gas reserves.

He said the oil and condensate reserves declined to about 0.22 per cent compared to January 1, 2022. He added that figures were attributable to low exploration activities and reserves revision arising from subsurface studies in 2022.

On the other hand, the slight increase of 0.10 per cent in gas reserves over the January 1, 2022 reserves position was primarily attributed to the revisions arising from additional information from new wells and field development studies.

“The commission, empowered by the PIA, has continued to drive the upstream industry’s performance to grow reserves through deliberate oil and gas exploration, deep drilling, prospects maturation, appraisal, field studies and improved oil recovery,” stated the NUPRC boss. “Our efforts are beginning to manifest in our gas reserves position, and we expect similar manifestation in oil reserves in the very short term.”

According to Mr Komolafe, as a country, Nigeria boasts 37.064 billion barrels of oil with a daily production of over 1.5 million barrels of oil.

He said in terms of reserves, Nigeria ranked second in Africa, eighth in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 11th in the World.

Mr Komolafe mentioned that, on the other hand, the country ranked first in Africa, sixth in OPEC and fifteenth in the World in terms of crude oil production.

“It is interesting to note that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for Nigeria stands at 1,998 dollars, which ranks her 12th position amongst the OPEC member states and 22nd in Africa,” explained Mr Komolafe. “Although crude oil contributes over 85 per cent to Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, its contribution to GDP is about 6.33 per cent, while Algeria’s is 10.2 per cent, Angola is 30 per cent, and Libya’s is over 50 per cent.”

(NAN)