CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

By Chineme Okafor

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Thursday added to the growing voices of pessimism on the accuracy of Nigeria’s crude oil production figures which have been reported by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

NNPC captures Nigeria’s current crude oil production figure at 2.7 million barrels per day (mbpd), a slight increase from her hitherto 2.4mbpd production figure which the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has expressed some doubt about.

Sanusi, who appeared before the Joint Committee of the House on Finance and Legislative Budget and Research as well as Aids and Loans Wednesday to proffer insight on the proposals within the 2013-2015 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper stated his disbelief in NNPC’s crude oil production figure.

Questioning the credibility of NNPC’s crude oil production quotation, Sanusi said: “You are talking about oil price and production benchmarks, how do we even know the figures are correct? Does NNPC have a metering system? How do they know how much we produce?

In a reaction to Sanusi’s claims, the Director of Communications, NEITI, Orji Ogbonanya Orji, told THISDAY via a telephone interview that the views of Sanusi as regards current crude oil production and metering infrastructure in the Nigeria’s petroleum sector are consistent with the transparency agency’s findings in its audit of activities in the petroleum sector.