Nigeria Earns $40bn from Oil Exports in Six Months

Nigeria has been estimated to have realised about $40 billion from crude oil exports in the first half of this year, according to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The 12-nation member organisation, in its revenue fact sheet, however stated that the Africa’s oil giant had net earnings of about $84 billion in 2013.

This revenue has positioned Nigeria as the fourth highest earner among OPEC members, after Saudi Arabia ($274 billion), Kuwait ($45 billion), and Iraq ($45 billion), during the same period.

Libya earned the least revenue with ($4 billion) after Equador ($5 billion).

The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) also estimated that excluding Iran, members of the OPEC earned about $826 billion in net oil export revenues in 2013, a seven per cent decrease from 2012 earnings, but the second largest earnings totals during

Total to sell more assets, cuts oil output target

French oil company Total is to sell more assets and cut costs to generate more cash and is to revamp exploration plans after reducing its oil production target.

Total, which has struggled with production outages in Libya, Kazakhstan and Nigeria, on Monday cut its 2017 output goal to 2.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from a previous 3 million.

France’s biggest company by market value and the West’s fourth biggest oil and gas group launched a “high-risk, high-reward” drilling strategy two years ago. But this has had disappointing results as high-cost investments did not lead to large discoveries.

“We have more than 15 major projects to fuel the future growth … Two thirds of those projects are operated by us so that gives us confidence we will achieve the targets,” chief financial officer Patrick de La Chevardiere said at Total’s investor day in London on Monday.

Total, like other big oil companies, has been under pressure from