Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum, has spoken up about the 2016 Nigerian budget, saying that the country needs to constantly produce about 900 000 barrels of crude oil per day to catch up with the budget 2016 oil benchmark.
Kachikwu stated this while speaking to Richard Quest on CNN’s Quest Means Business.
Kachikwu further noted that he is does not think OPEC meeting in Algeria in September, can upturn crude oil prices on the globe.
“It is a difficult time, production is about 1.5 million barrels a day, but we intend to get that up. We are putting a lot of energy around it, a lot of dialogue, a lot of engagement, a lot of security meetings to try and resolve it,” Kachikwu said.
“President Muhammadu Buhari is very concerned about these things, a lot of executive time is being given to this. We are expecting that over the next one month, two months, we would find some final solution that would bring production upward.
“Beyond that, the reality is that we have lost a lot quite a lot of months, about five, six months of continuous problems. so it is going to be difficult to catch up with the 2.2 million barrels on which the 2016 budget is based.
“But we are certainly going to try, once things are calmer. We need an average of 900,000 barrels per day, excess production to catch up. That is going to be very tough, but we are going to work on that.”