ABUJA: The slide in Nigeria’s revenue from oil exports touched the lowest level in five years, recording a loss of about $62 billion, depicting a 57.8 per cent decline in oil money receipt by the country, it has been gathered.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which revealed this in its World Factbook on Field Listing: Exports – Commodities of 15 biggest oil exporters in the world, noting that Nigeria is becoming a fast-declining oil exporter. Notwithstanding the loss,Nigeria raked-in N$38 billion in 2015 from oil exports. This, the agency said, was 4.8 per cent of the total revenues made by 10 countries biggest oil exporters for the year.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude exporter, depends largely on proceeds from crude oil to service over 85 per cent of its budget, which constitutive some 70 per cent of her foreign exchange earnings. The declines in the value of the country’s crude oil exports from 2011 to 2015, the agency said, stood at over 55 per cent.
“Oil is the world’s number one export product. Amounting to 4.8 per cent of the global value of all export products, crude oil shipments totalled $786.3 billion for 2015,” the report stated. That figure, it explained, “represents a -50.3 per cent drop in value since 2011 and a -44.4 per cent decline from 2014 to 2015.”
Giving a breakdown of the losses, the CIA report showed that Middle Eastern countries accounted for the highest dollar value worth of crude oil exports during 2015 with shipments valued at $325 billion or 41.3 per cent of global crude oil exports. “This compares with 18 per cent for Europe, 9.9 per cent for North America and 7.7 per cent for Latin America (excluding Mexico) and Caribbean exporters,” the study showed.
It continued: “The four-digit Harmonized Tariff System code prefix for crude oil is 2709. Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of crude oil during 2015: Saudi Arabia: $133.3 billion (17 per cent of total crude oil exports); Russia: $86.2 billion (11 per cent); Iraq: $52.2 billion (6.6 per cent); United Arab Emirates: $51.2 billion (6.5 per cent); Canada: $50.2 billion (6.4 per cent) and Nigeria: $38 billion (4.8 per cent).
“Others are Kuwait: $34.1 billion (4.3 per cent); Angola: $32.6 billion (4.1 per cent); Venezuela: $27.8 billion (3.5 per cent); Kazakhstan: $26.2 billion (3.3 per cent); Norway: $25.7 billion (3.3 per cent); Iran: $20.5 billion (2.6 per cent); Mexico: $18.8 billion (2.4 per cent); Oman: $17.4 billion (2.2 per cent) and United Kingdom: $16 billion (two per cent).
“All of the above international traders posted declines in the value of their crude oil exports from 2011 to 2015, ranging from -27.7 per cent for Canada to -75.7 per cent for Iran. “Apart from Iran, other fastdeclining oil exporters were: Mexico (down -62 per cent), Nigeria (down -57.8 per cent), Norway (down -56.7 per cent) and Venezuela (down -54.4 per cent).”
