adminABUJA – Nigeria’s oil savings account stood at $4.1 billion as at September 16, broadly flat compared with $4 billion in August, deputy Finance Minister Bashir Yuguda said on Wednesday.
The Excess Crude Account (ECA) had around $11.5 billion in January 2013 but after several bouts of spending had fallen to $2.5 billion at the beginning of this year.
Nigeria’s oil savings usually get depleted during an election cycle, when the demands of patronage surge. The country faces presidential polls in February 2015.
Meanwhile, Nigerian oil unions continued a strike on Wednesday they said could affect exports if no agreement is reached with the government, although market sources said as yet no impact was being felt and some doubted it would.
The oil workers began striking on Tuesday over a disagreement with the government over pensions and a lack of crude supplied to refineries.
Babatunde Oke, spokesperson for the white-collar workers’ union Pengassan, said by text message that “the strike is still on, as no agreement had been reached”.
The workers on strike are only those who work for the state-owned oil firm the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), not the international oil majors which operate the oil blocks and export terminals.
A senior official in an international oil company said the strike could become a threat if it became more generalised to include workers for private oil companies as well as the government, but there was no sign of that yet.- Reuters.
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