This was revealed via a statement by the Director-General of NECA, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, who also stated that the recent spike in oil production volume which grew by 4.2 percent to 1.23 million BPD in December 2023 had little or no effect to mitigate the shortfall which has continually cost the country billions of dollars.
According to Oyerinde, the shortfall which translates to a loss of 0.57 million BPD is about $2.5 billion monthly when converted to revenue can be described as a great loss for the country.
He fingered oil theft and the “unsustainable subsidy on petroleum products “ as the main issues which have continued reducing the government’s revenue, leading to absurd debt accumulation.
“While there have been projections for a global recession in 2023, the time for a major paradigm shift in our economic philosophy is now. Over the last decade, the country has spent over N10tn on fuel subsidy, about N15.5tn on Capital Expenditure, N2.5tn on Health and about N3.9tn on Education. This is a misplacement of priority and shows that critical developmental items such as education, health and infrastructure have suffered due to crass misplacement of our economic priorities,” he concluded.
This position was corroborated by a popular finance website, MarketWatch as it confirmed in a recent report that Nigeria's oil production fell by 40% in 2022 compared to its oil production output in 2019.
This was sourced from a World Bank report which also revealed that the reduction in oil production level also lowered the country's economic growth from 3.6% to 3.1% the prior year.
According to the World Bank report, oil production dropped to one million BPD and was mainly caused by technical problems, insecurity, rising production costs, theft and lack of payment discipline in joint ventures.