(Ecofin Agency) - The Secretary-General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Mohammad Barkindo (photo), has said that Nigeria does not intend to go beyond its oil production target of 1.8 million barrels per day, until the end of March 2018. The Secretary-General disclosed this at the opening of the fourth Joint OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia.

OPEC and some non-OPEC states including Russia, in 2016 agreed to cut production by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd). Libya and Nigeria, were exempted from this deal because their output had been affected by conflict. Supplies from both countries recovered slightly in May, increasing overall OPEC output by 250,000 bpd to 32.22 million bpd. The biggest increase came from Nigeria, where a force majeure was lifted on Forcados export. The Forcados pipeline had been mostly shut since it was bombed by militants in February 2016.

A ministerial committee of OPEC and non-OPEC states which monitors the global oil deal on Monday, said it had agreed that Nigeria would join the deal by capping its output at 1.8 million bpd, once it stabilizes at that level from the current 1.7 million bpd. They, however, did not give a timeframe for when this would happen, but said it would track Nigerian production patterns in the next weeks.

The monitoring committee did not support capping Libya’s output, saying that the country’s production might not exceed 1 million bpd in the near future as against its capacity of 1.4 million-1.6 million bpd before the 2011 unrest.

Anita Fatunji