10 African countries with the largest crude oil production output

Business Insider Africa presents 10 African countries with the largest crude oil production output as of December 2021.
This list is courtesy of statistics made available by Statista.

For years, crude oil has been a major revenue driver for many African countries. Across the continent, crude deposits are abundant. A report by Statista said that the continent's proven crude oil reserves stood at 125.3 billion barrels in 2021 alone. The following countries have the most reserves: Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Sudan, Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda, Gabon, Chad, etc.

Figure showing the distribution of Africa's crude oil reserves by country Figure showing the distribution of Africa's crude oil reserves by country BI Africa

Which of these countries produced the most crude in 2021?

As you should know, it's one thing to have crude reserves in abundance and another thing to actually be able and willing to extract said crude. And since we are focusing on last year's crude output, it's interesting to see whether the countries with the largest volumes of crude reserves were also the ones that produced the most.

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That said, below are the ten African countries that produced the most crude oil in 2021. For the sake of clarity, we compared data provided by both the Organisation of Petroleum exporting Countries (OPEC) and other reliable data mining companies.

10 African countries with the largest crude oil production output in 2021

Nigeria: This West African country was the largest crude producer in 2021. Nigeria's average daily crude production was 1.27 million barrels.
Libya: Nigeria was followed by this Northern African country which produced an average of 1.21 million barrels of crude per day in 2021.
Angola: The oil-rich country produced a daily average of 1.11 million barrels of crude.
Algeria: This Northern African country produced an average of 959, 000 barrels of crude per day.
Egypt: Egypt produced 559, 000 barrels per day.
Republic of the Congo: This country's production output in 2021 stood at a daily average of 253, 000 barrels.
Gabon: Gabon's production output stood at an average of 188, 000 per day.
Ghana: The West African country's daily crude production output in 2021 was 176, 000 barrels.
Equatorial Guinea: The average daily production output in this country was 71, 000 barrels.
Chad: Production output was 70, 000 barrels per day.

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Do note that Brent Crude (the benchmark price for global oil sales) is currently trading at $110.3 per crude according to information obtained from Oilprice.com.