Worry as Nigeria’s oil rigs count stagnates

Nigeria’s oil rigs count has stagnated at 13 during the month, the latest data from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has revealed.

This is coming despite the country adding about 48,000 barrels per day in February, Reuters reports.
Hope of new investment in the oil and gas sector in the country grew in January when Nigeria’s oil rigs count rose from six to 13 between January 2022 and January 2023 as earlier indicated by Baker Hughes figures.
But the velocity has now been slowed, with the February data showing that no new rigs came into the country, although there has been an improvement in the volume of oil drilled, which is still significantly lower by at least 500,000 bpd.
Despite the remarkable recovery in global crude oil demand, Nigeria had been unable to ramp up production, following massive theft of the resource in the Niger Delta as well as shutdowns due to frequent equipment failure.
In the oil and gas industry, the rig count is a major index for measuring activities in the upstream sector.
While for instance, 26 rigs were in operation, on both onshore and offshore terrains, in 1997, Nigeria has had the number remarkably depleted in recent years.
In January, the rigs hit over a dozen, up from 12 in December and up from six one year ago, marking a major positive change of 8.33 per cent from November last year and a whopping 116.7 per cent from one year ago.
However, new information from OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) released this March, showed that expectations that the rigs count could hit 14 this month did not materialise.
There had also been hope of additional rigs when offshore contractor, Dolphin Drilling, which in February had one of its semi-submersible rigs on its way to Nigeria, was expected to start its new drilling campaign.
In addition, Blackford Dolphin had departed Las Palmas and was already en route Nigeria, following a successful shipyard campaign, which enabled the recertification for a further five years. It appeared from the data that they had yet to begin operation as of the second month of this year.
Nigeria’s oil output had begun to rebound since October last year, after a multi-decade low of 900,000 bpd, with the rate of growth rising to 28,000 barrels per day increase in January and 48,000 bpd in February, to hit 1.3 million bpd during the month.
But the figure was lower when compared to the over 55,000 bpd increase in December, according to data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), but much better than the 28,000 bpd January production figure and the 48,000 bpd drilling in February.
While production in December, the previous month, was 1.235 million bpd, the January oil output was 1.258 million bpd, while the February figure stood at 1.306 million bpd.
But as opposed to Nigeria’s 13 rigs, the United States as of February, according to the OPEC MOMR data, had 758 oil rigs, Canada had 248, while Mexico had 46, bringing the Americas’ total to 1,954 rigs.
In Africa, Algeria had 31 while Angola had nine oil rigs as of February.

Iran’s rigs were 117, Iraq’s were 62, Libya had 12 even as Saudi Arabia had 77 and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had 54.
In total, OPEC members’ rig count were 407 while the world rig count stood at 2,004, an increase of 22 rigs during the month.