Higher global crude oil prices helped Nigeria to more than double its oil windfall savings year-on-year to $9.66 billion, the state NAN news agency Thursday quoted a senior government official as saying.
“We have fared very well in the Excess Crude Account, we targeted $10 billion at the end of the year and I am happy to tell you that we have $9.66 billion in the account,” NAN quoted Accountant-General Jonah Otunla as saying in Abuja.
“On a percentage basis, that is about 97% of our aspiration for the year,” Otunla said.
A steady rise in crude oil production this year matched by an equally high oil prices on the international market, helped boost Nigeria’s oil windfall savings from $4 billion a year earlier.
Nigeria created a special account into which it saves oil earnings over the benchmark price it adopts for a year.
While it pegged the oil price at $72/barrel and production at 2.4 million b/d for 2012 prices in the global market had been far higher than the benchmark and production running between 2.4 million and 2.5 million b/d.
Oil exports account for over 95% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange revenues and around 80% of total government revenues.