Official denies United States pressured Nigeria to withdraw from OPEC

by The Associated Press

A U.S. State Department official denied that the United States pressured Nigeria to withdraw from OPEC to diversify U.S. imports.

“There is no policy to buy more or less oil from Nigeria. The market is well established and will sort it all out,” Walter Kansteiner, the State Department’s top official for Africa, said July 25.

Kansteiner made the comments half way through a three-day visit to Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. He made an earlier stop in Angola, Africa’s second biggest oil producer after Nigeria.

Nigerian Information Minister Jerry Gana told The Associated Press July 24 that his country has been under increasing pressure from the United States to leave the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and increase its exports. Gana said the pressure came as part of a U.S. desire to lessen its reliance on Middle Eastern oil.

Gana insisted Nigeria was not considering withdrawing from the cartel as one British newspaper reported. The report caused international oil prices to dip briefly.

Nigeria is the sixth-biggest oil exporter in the world and the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States. Kansteiner said that Nigeria, Angola and other oil-rich nations in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea are of “strategic importance in the sense that we are keen to see exploration and production continue in the region.”