Nigeria: Oil price slump affecting production, undermining fiscal sustainability and growth

2015 was a momentous year for Nigeria. The general elections held in March brought about the first democratic transition of power from a ruling party to an opposition party, heightening expectations for meaningful political change. The new Government is establishing itself during a very challenging time, however, marked by a sharp, sustained decline in global oil prices and continuing violence in the country's northeast.

Given the high dependency of Nigeria on oil revenues, the recent sharp decline in oil prices has given rise to major challenges in the form of external imbalance, steep falls in government revenues, and slower economic growth. As the World Bank says in its recent Nigeria Economic Report, in contrast to the period of 2008-2009, Nigeria no longer has a large fiscal reserve to buffer government budgets from the revenue shortfalls. The report goes on to describe the country's major fiscal contraction and slower economic growth last year spurred in part by falling oil output and an increasing cost of the fuel subsidy during 2001-2014 that contributed to a drawdown of the Excess Crude Account from $22 billion in 2008 to about $2 billion in 2015. The ECA had previously enabled the government to finance fiscal stimulus and sustain growth during the late 2000s while other economies globally suffered. 

Given expectations for lower average oil prices and deferred oil production in the future, Nigeria will likely need to reduce rapidly the dependency of government finance on oil, according to the World Bank.

In this page we provide a comprehensive overview of Nigeria's oil production, exports volumes, revenues and the position in the international oil market, as well as the recent data on key finance and economic indicators

Sources: International Energy Agency (IEA) Monthly Oil Market Report; U. S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) International Energy Statistics; Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI)) Oil dataset; OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin; Oil Supply and Demand: OPEC Estimates And Projections (OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report); US Petroleum dataset (EIA); Nigeria Foreign Trade (UN Comtrade Database); Nigeria Crude Oil Official Selling Prices and differentials vs. Dated Brent (Thomson Reuters data); Charles R. Weber Company (Tanker Freight Rates); World Bank Global Economic Monitor; International Debt Statistics (World Bank); IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), October 2015