Oil Earnings Hit $13.5bn In Q1

Nigeria’s earnings from crude oil and gas, which accounted for 93.3 per cent of total export earnings during the review period, increased by 10.1 per cent to $13.426.53 billion in the first quarter of 2018 when compared with the preceding quarter.

The country has recorded an improvement in oil its crude oil exploration as exports stablilised in the first quarter at 1.9 million barrels per day.

This is still against the 2018 budget of 2.3 million barrels per day.
Earnings from non-oil and electricity ex-ports also increased by 12.3 per cent to $967.08 million in Q1 2018 when compared with the preceding quarter.

Export earnings rose by 10.2 per cent to US$14.393.61 billion in Q1 2018 when compared with Q4 2017. It also indicated an increase of about 44.4 per cent when compared to Q1 2017.

Available data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed that payments for import of goods (fob) to the economy in the review period grew by 13.9 per cent to $8.641.60 billion above the level recorded in the preceding period.
This was largely as a result of 99.5 per cent increase in the imports of petroleum products.

According to the data, direct Investments inflow declined by 15.7 per cent and 5.3 per cent to $808.56 million when compared with the preceding quarter and corresponding period of 2017.

There are also indications that Nigeria’s oil exports are expected to fall in July to 1.43 million barrels per day (bpd), loading plans showed, the lowest level so far this year.

The export plan comprised 48 cargoes, compared with 60 cargoes and a daily rate of 1.796 million bpd in June, due, in part, to an outage on the Bonny Light stream, which has been under force majeure for a month. July’s export plan also includes four cargoes of Akpo condensate with 123,000 bpd, compared with four cargoes in June with 133,000 bpd.