How Nigeria Races to Extract Oil Before It’s Too Late: QuickTake

Nigeria’s vast reserves of oil and gas have generated riches but have also led to decades of conflict and corruption. Resentment has fed bouts of militancy in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta, the low-lying waterways bordering the Atlantic Ocean, where minority ethnic groups have struggled for a share of the wealth. Now Nigeria’s leaders want to almost triple crude production just as a warming world seeks to move away from fossil fuels. They aim to fill a void left by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which pioneered development of the nation’s fields more than 60 years ago but is now pulling back from Nigeria.

After years of stagnant oil output, the government enacted a law in August cutting taxes on energy companies to more globally competitive levels. Production royalties will range from 5% to 15%, depending on location, down from 7.5% to 20%. The move seeks to end uncertainty that’s held back investment and led to license disputes. The government also wants to revamp dilapidated state-owned refineries to wean the country off imports of processed fuels. “We are in the last mile of the oil economy,” Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s petroleum minister, said when the law was passed. “We are in a race to produce as much oil as we can.”