Nigeria's average crude oil and condensates production inched up to 2.06 million bpd in July from 2.05 million bpd in June, but that output jumped from the 1.6 million bpd of July last year -- when frequent militant attacks were disrupting flows every other week -- according to data by Nigeria's petroleum ministry, as quoted by Platts.
Last month, the Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru said that improved security situation in the Niger Delta and the resumption of loadings and operations at the Forcados Oil Terminal and Qua Iboe Terminal pipelines would allow Nigeria to exceed its target for 2017 to produce 2.2 million bpd of crude oil and condensates.
After Forcados restarted loadings early in June for the first time since October last year, exports of the grade have been on the rise.
In terms of crude oil output only, Nigerian crude production rose by 96,700 bpd to 1.733 million bpd in June, according to OPEC's secondary sources, and the July figures will be announced on Thursday this week.
In July, according to the latest S&P Global Platts OPEC survey, which measures oil output -- excluding condensates and NGLs - Nigeria's oil production averaged 1.81 million bpd, which was an increase of 30,000 bpd compared to June.
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Nigeria and Libya, exempt from the OPEC production cuts, have recovered their respective crude output in recent months to the point that analysts were thinking if production caps should be introduced to curb rising output from within the cartel. OPEC invited the two exempt producers to share their production plans and challenges at the technical meeting in Russia at the end of July.
Before the meeting, Nigeria signaled that it would be ready to support the cuts, but when its production reaches a stable 1.8 million bpd over a period of a couple of months-July would be the first month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More