The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Wednesday said it had driven down the cost of crude oil production from $78 per barrel as of August 2015 to $23 per barrel, representing a 70.5 per cent fall. The Group General Manager, National Petroleum Investment Management Services, a unit of the NNPC, Dafe Sejebor, disclosed this during the inauguration of the anti-corruption committee of the unit, adding that the country had saved a minimum of $3bn per annum.

Sejebor said NAPIMS arrived at the figure after looking at the difference between the $78 and $23, representing the old and new cost of production in relation to the current daily average production in the country. He was quoted in a statement issued by the corporation’s spokesperson, Ndu Ughamadu, as saying “If you knock down your cost of production from $78 per barrel to $23, take the difference and multiply by the average daily production, you will discover that we are saving a minimum of $3bn in the upstream for both Production Sharing Contracts and Joint Ventures.”