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Nigerian budget not under threat as oil prices crash to $65
Amidst concerns that the Nigeria budget may be over funding, it appears that the oil prices crashing will not affect it.
This however does not affect Nigeria's 2018 budget of N8.612 trillion even though the budget is based on $45 per barrel and 2.3 million daily oil output.
This is the lowest it has been in 2018 with soaring output in the US undermining Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) efforts to tighten markets and prop up prices.
Brent crude price was at $65.28 per barrel down 23 cents, or 0.4%, from the previous close. The dips followed bigger falls on Wednesday, February 7, 2018, when crude touched one-month lows and erased most of 2018's early gains.
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Support came from the second outage in as many months on the 450,000 barrels per day Forties pipeline network, Britain's biggest, which supplies much of the crude underpinning Brent futures.
But the biggest market driver was US production which averaged above 10 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since the early 1970s last week, reaching 10.25 million bpd.
Market watchers say the OPEC-led restraint is arguably the biggest enabler for America's production boom, handing over market share at higher oil prices.
At 10.25 million bpd, U.S. output is now higher than the previous 10.044 million bpd record from back in 1970, topping Saudi Arabia and within reach of Russia's.
Weighing further on prices was that U.S. commercial crude stocks rose by 1.9 million barrels in the week to February 2, 2018, to 420.25 million barrels.
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The official U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) this week upped its 2018 output forecast to 10.59 million bpd, up by a whopping 300,000 bpd from their last forecast just a week earlier.
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