The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kchikwu, said Monday that Nigeria has forever lost the United States as a significant crude export market.
“That’s gone,” Emmanuel Kachikwu said during a news conference at CERAWeek by IHS Markit. Light sweet Nigerian crude is similar to the light oil produced in US shale. As US shale production has grown, the appetite for Nigerian crude in the US has dropped dramatically.
US imports of Nigerian crude did average 296,000 b/d in December last year, according to US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, the highest monthly import level since 2011. But Kachikwu called any significant increase in Nigerian shipments to the US “very unlikely.”