BUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s state oil firm NNPC plans to renew its contract for crude sales with Indonesia which expired last year, part of moves to boost exports, it said on Tuesday.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said it was interested in working with Indonesia’s national oil company Pertamina to improve its volume of crude exports, NNPC’s new group managing director Mele Kyari told Indonesia’s ambassador.
The corporation said in a statement that the partnership with Pertamina could open up opportunities for Nigeria’s crude oil in the face of unpredictable global markets.
It said Indonesia imported crude oil worth $2.5 billion from Nigeria last year, the statement said, adding that the contract ended in December.
President Muhammadu Buhari in June appointed Kyari, a geologist, to head NNPC. Kyari is also Nigeria’s representative at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest crude producer and the oil industry is the mainstay of the continent’s biggest economy. Crude sales provide around 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange – and a slump in oil prices in 2014 pushed the economy into a recession in 2016.
(Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha; editing by David Evans)
