Nigeria’s daily crude oil extraction, excluding blended condensates, declined by 37,000 barrels per day (bpd) to average 1.546 million bpd in July 2026, down from 1.583 million bpd recorded in June, according to the August 2026 Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) published on Wednesday by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The 2.3% drop in crude-only output halted six consecutive months of upward volume trajectory observed across Nigerian upstream terminals throughout the first half of 2026.
Despite the contraction, national crude production remained comfortably above Nigeria’s official OPEC baseline quota of 1.50 million bpd for the third straight month.
Supplemented by roughly 170,000 bpd of unallocated condensate, Nigeria’s combined liquid volume reached 1.67 million bpd in July—reflecting a total volume dip from June’s 1.735 million bpd peak, as corroborated in data released concurrently by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) in Abuja.
Addressing the figures in an official corporate statement issued from the regulator’s head office in Abuja on Wednesday afternoon, the Head of Media and Corporate Communications at the NUPRC, Eniola Akinkuotu, linked the dip directly to localized technical difficulties offshore.
”While national output sustained compliance above our designated OPEC target through July, production statistics confirm a month-on-month overall decline of four percent. This movement was primarily prompted by sudden operational bottlenecks encountered at the Erha and Akpo deepwater fields, which limited maximum achievable pumping rates during the reporting window.” Eniola Akinkuotu stated.
Akinkuotu emphasized that despite deepwater interruptions, major onshore and shallow-water export hubs including the Forcados, Bonny, and Qua Iboe marine terminals, maintained robust operational uptime, preventing further volume slippage.
The transient drop in West Africa’s largest economy emerged alongside broader supply expansions across the wider OPEC+ coalition. Aggregate crude production from participating countries under the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) expanded by 1.42 million bpd in July to 37.66 million bpd, powered by significant capacity restorations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.
OPEC market analysts retained a constructive economic forecast for Nigeria, noting that ongoing upstream fiscal incentives and infrastructure hardening efforts should enable the country to push toward its domestic target of 1.80 million bpd before year-end.
