There were increased concerns over the implementation of Nigeria’s 2025 budget, weekend, as oil price dropped further to $59 per barrel from more than $70 per barrel, the lowest this year.
This is about 15.7 percent lower than this year’s peak price of over $70 per barrel, reports Vanguard.
Funding of the budget was benchmarked on $75 per barrel and more than two million bpd, including condensate. Also, in its April 2025 Monthly Oil Report, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC, said the nation’s March 2025 oil output, including condensate dropped marginally to 1.6 million bpd from 1.7 million bpd in February, showing more than 300,000 bpd below the budget benchmark.
Oil prices have slumped since last Wednesday when President Donald Trump of the United States announced sweeping tariffs, expected to raise the effective U.S. tariff rate to its highest level in more than a century.
Also, checks by our correspondent indicated that the global oil market was negatively impacted, due to increased production and export from many nations even as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, and its allies, popularly known as OPEC+, move to phase out their voluntary oil output cuts by ramping up output in May by 411,000 barrels per day.
In a telephone interview with our correspondent yesterday, the National President of Oil and Gas Service Providers Association of Nigeria, OGSPAN, Mazi Colman Obasi, said: “The oil market has become very volatile in recent times, due to factors beyond Nigeria. The nation needs to start looking beyond crude oil to generate adequate foreign exchange.”
Similarly, the Chief Executive Officer of Petroleum Price NG, Olatide Jeremiah, said: “We have a major drop in crude oil prices, which is capable of affecting the execution of the nation’s 2025 budget.”
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed, had said: “As consumers, we are happy that the price is coming down, but as a nation, it’s not good for our economy because our revenue inflow is also impacted.
“Most importantly, what is even destabilising the market is inconsistencies in the way President Trump also sends his policies. He moves today. Tomorrow, he reverses. So, it’s been challenging to predict the next level.
“Recently, as we all know, the global oil market, not only oil market, but the global economy has been a bit volatile, in the sense of the new American government’s policy of tariffs, not only targeted at China but the whole countries across the world.
Investors and traders in not only the oil and gas industry but in general economies of the world are moving left and right to the extent that some are doing day trading.
That means you do your trading today. You close by the end of today because you never know what tomorrow’s policy will drive the market into.
“So, the crude oil and petrol products market continues to have a downward trajectory because of these inconsistencies and policies of the government of United States, and the key aspect of it is the aspiration of the American President to ensure that the crude oil pricing, or the crude oil price come down to maybe below $50 a barrel, that’s why he encourages more exploration in his country.”
He also, said: “We are happy as consumers of the derivatives of product pricing that the price is coming down, but when you look at it globally as a nation, it’s not good for our economy because our revenue inflow is also impacted.
“If the crude oil price, like what happened some Fridays ago, where it dropped in one day from about $73 a barrel to $60, you can see that in terms of our crude oil production, our revenue is impacted severely.
“This volatility will continue because as recently as yesterday, when President Trump again exempted some sectors from tariff, particularly to China, like in terms of vehicular tariffing, you saw the market again started to go up.”
