Nigeria is currently pumping 1.67 million barrels of oil and condensates per day, according to the chairman of the state oil firm NNPC.

Large-scale oil theft from pipelines and wells has hampered the country’s output and curtailed exports in recent years, straining Nigeria’s budget and posing one of President Bola Tinubu’s most difficult difficulties.

“This is substantial – if you look at the situation where we are almost going below a million barrels a year some months ago,” Mele Kyari, NNPC’s group chief executive said.

Tinubu, who has embarked on Nigeria’s boldest reforms in decades, scrapped a costly but popular subsidy on petrol that cost the country $10 billion last year.

Nigeria would have been spending about 1 trillion naira ($1.3 billion) monthly on the subsidy “in today’s market conditions”, Kyari said, adding that petrol consumption is down 30% to 46 million litres after the removal of the fuel subsidy.