West Africa on the up
Oil production will grow again in 2016, despite the downturn in prices
STRUGGLING for cash, Nigeria wants to boost oil production. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, head of state oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), said in December that the country aimed to raise oil by 300,000 barrels a day in 2016. It’s not clear how this will happen – the government already says it is producing 2.1m b/d, conveniently almost 300,000 b/d above the number offered by secondary sources. President Muhammadu Buhari, elected last April, is trying to reform NNPC and improve the regulatory framework for oil and gas projects. From March, NNPC will replace crude oil swap agreements with direct crude sales to refiners and the purchase of refined products directly – an effort to
Also in this section
18 February 2026
With marketable supply unlikely to grow significantly and limited scope for pipeline imports, Brazil is expected to continue relying on LNG to cover supply shortfalls, Ieda Gomes, senior adviser of Brazilian thinktank FGV Energia,
tells Petroleum Economist
17 February 2026
The 25th WPC Energy Congress, taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 26–30 April 2026, will bring together leaders from the political, industrial, financial and technology sectors under the unifying theme “Pathways to an Energy Future for All”
17 February 2026
Siemens Energy has been active in the Kingdom for nearly a century, evolving over that time from a project-based foreign supplier to a locally operating multi-national company with its own domestic supply chain and workforce
17 February 2026
Eni’s chief operating officer for global natural resources, Guido Brusco, takes stock of the company’s key achievements over the past year, and what differentiates its strategy from those of its peers in the LNG sector and beyond
