Nigeria

Nigeria is West Africa's largest economy and a major dual-track hydrocarbon exporter: an OPEC member producing crude oil in the Niger Delta, and the world's fourth-largest LNG exporter through Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG), a joint venture between NNPC (49%), Shell (25.6%), TotalEnergies (15%), and Eni (10.4%), operating from Bonny Island.

Nigeria's crude oil sector has historically suffered from chronic underproduction against its OPEC quota, driven by Niger Delta pipeline vandalism, community unrest, and infrastructure deterioration. In the OPEC+ compliance picture for 2026, Nigeria sits alongside Iraq as a persistently non-compliant producer — though for structural rather than deliberate over-quota reasons. It participated in the seven-member 206kbd June increase agreed on 30 April 2026. On the LNG side, three Nigerian cargoes were diverted from Europe to Asia in April 2026 as the narrowing JKM-TTF spread made Asian prices sufficiently attractive to redirect flexible Atlantic cargoes, contributing to a 15% weekly fall in EU LNG imports at a moment of critically low European storage.

NLNG has a nameplate capacity of approximately 22 million tonnes per annum across six trains. European buyers in the UK, Spain, and Portugal have historically been major offtakers. Nigeria's LNG exports are structurally important to EU supply diversity as an Atlantic-basin alternative to Middle Eastern and US supply, but feedstock shortfalls from Niger Delta disruption make deliveries less reliable than Qatar or Australian cargoes. Nigeria's macroeconomic position — with significant fiscal dependence on hydrocarbon revenues and a population of 220 million — means the government has a strong incentive to maximise short-term export revenues by following the highest available price signal, whether Asian or European.