Nigeria’s oil revenue is increasing exponentially as crude oil prices surged on Thursday to $119.79 a barrel. This price is $54.79 higher than the country’s 2011 budget benchmark of $65.
Oil prices have been increasing consistently in the past two weeks due to the political turmoil in oil producing nations in Africa and the Middle East.
Prices surged to a two-and-half-year high as the revolt in Libya choked exports, then eased as Saudi Arabia assured European refiners.
According to a report by Reuters, the Brent crude price jumped by 7.5 per cent as the revolt cut off up to three quarters of Libya’s 1.6 million barrels per day production, according to Italian oil company, ENI, a top player in Libya’s oil sector.
Brent crude traded up by $3.04 to $114.29 a barrel, after hitting $119.79 earlier, the highest level since August 2008. United States’ crude price rose by $1.26 to $99.36 a barrel, after touching $103.41, the highest since September 2009.
The stronger gains in Brent pushed its premium to United States’ oil, which has been weighed down by high inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for the New York Mercantile Exchange.
