Nigeria lucky again as OPEC extends oil output cut by 9 months
Nigeria stands to continue to benefit from an improved oil revenue as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided on Thursday in Vienna to extend cuts in oil output by nine months to March 2018 to further battle a global glut of crude. OPEC’s cuts have helped to push oil back above $50 a barrel this year, giving a fiscal boost to producers, many of whom rely heavily on energy revenues. Oil’s earlier price decline, which started in 2014, forced Russia and Saudi Arabia to tighten their belts and led to unrest in some producing countries, including Venezuela and Nigeria. In December, OPEC agreed its first production cuts in a decade and the first joint cuts with non-OPEC, led by Russia in 15 years. The two sides decided to remove about 1.8 million barrels per day from the market in the first half of 2017, equal to 2 per cent of global production. Despite the output cut, OPEC kept exports fairly stable in the first half of 2017 as its members sold oil from stocks.