/ 27 July 1999

NIGERIA TO INCREASE PRODUCTION

NIGERIA’S new government plans to increase crude oil production from two to three million barrels per day, President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Tuesday. “We will not hold back on the investments necessary” to increase oil production, Obasanjo said, as he announced his administration’s first budget since comming to power on May 29. The new president did not give a time-frame for the planned increase in production. Nigeria is currently the world’s seventh largest oil producer, with an output of 1,82-million barrels per day under the quota agreed with the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The government has promised to keep to its agreed OPEC quota.