Nigeria has ranked 11th position on a top-20 list of countries with largest proven oil reserves, Nigeria is at the 11th position out of 20 Countries in total.
Despite this impressive achievement, Nigeria’s crude oil reserve is still stagnant at 37 billion barrels for the past 10 years due to low exploration for new discoveries.
According to the report, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and other sources were used to carefully take out the largest countries with crude oil reserves as of 2021.
Due to its low sulfuric content, and low corrosiveness to refinery infrastructure, Nigeria’s crude oil is arguably one of the most preferred. It also has a lower environmental impact of byproducts during the refinery process, putting its grade, Bonny Light, as one of the most expensively priced and sold at the international markets today.
Key players in the oil and gas sector projected that Nigeria is well positioned to both sustain its position as top oil producer in Africa and to readjust upward, its current status among 20 countries with largest oil reserves.
According to experts, this will no doubt require urgent reforms and political willingness to implement key fiscal reforms and reassurances of return on investment by overhauling present security architecture.
Nigeria’s reserves were put at 36.89 billion barrels in 2021 and reportedly produced 1.13 million barrels of oil in November 2022.
The United States of America, followed with reserves of about 47.10 billion barrels of oil as of 2020, while the state of Libya had 48.36 billion barrels in 2021.
Mrs. Tunbosun Afolayan, executive director ProAlly Energy and energy sustainability expert said Nigeria is well positioned to surpass its present reserves if the right fiscal policies are put in place.
Afolayan said that if Nigeria is willing to reduce cost of production by incentivizing operators through rebates, infrastructure development, tax holiday as obtained in other climes, investment inflows into the industry will create opportunities for more discoveries.
According to her, Nigeria is yet to fully tap the potentials in the sector and growing insecurity is further creating investor apathy which has recently led to production decline.
Dr. Muda Yusuf, Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of the Center For The Promotion Of Private Enterprise, CPPE, also agreed that Nigeria has the potential to overtake key oil producing nations listed in the report and sustain it.
