Nigeria reportedly suffered 16 per cent crude and gas production losses following a three-day oil workers’ strike that briefly threatened crude supplies to the Dangote Refinery before being called off.
According to Bloomberg, Africa’s largest crude producer lost 283,000 barrels of oil per day within the first 24 hours of the strike, which was organized by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria.
The losses were confirmed by Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, in a letter seen by Bloomberg and verified by the state-owned company’s spokesperson, Andy Odeh.
While PENGASSAN concluded the strike on Wednesday after the Dangote Refinery agreed to reassign workers who had been fired over alleged acts of sabotage, the country was also said to have lost 1.7 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day and more than 1,200 megawatts of power generation.
The letter, which was sent to the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, detailed that this combined disruption equated to around 16% of national oil output, 30% of marketed gas, and 20% of electricity generation.
Nigeria typically produces an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, and the Dangote Refinery, the continent’s largest refiner, meets between 35% to 50% of Nigerian gasoline demand. The production loss represents a major setback for Africa’s fourth-largest economy, which is heavily reliant on crude exports for foreign currency and had aimed to increase oil output to over 2 million barrels per day this year.
The strike also caused a delay in the planned restoration of crude and monetized gas production under existing joint ventures and production sharing contract arrangements.
Ojulari underscored the strike’s broad impact, stating: “It is our considered view that the current industrial action has impacts that extend beyond the Dangote refinery.”
He further warned that the disruptions “posed systemic risks to energy supply, personnel and asset security and the wider economy.”
