International records / Foreign Relations of the United States

242. Paper Prepared in the Department of State

he Algerian-managed national oil company for “technical reasons”. The technical justification for these limits is questioned by Western oilmen, but their imposition clearly reflects a broadly accepted local desire to maximize long-term field output. Nigeria raised its output in early 1979 to about 2.4 million b/d in response to the Iranian crisis, but production has since been reduced to about 2.2 million b/d because of technical reasons (falling pressure in small fields) and conservationist sentiment. Algeria and Libya have 200,000 and 100,000 b/d of spare capacity which they might bring back…