TEHRAN Nigeria is the sixth largest exporter of crude oil to the United States and pledged earlier this month to increase output from new deed water fields in a move U.S.
President Bill Clinton hopes will ease high prices, AFP reported from Lagos.
Africa's largest oil producer meets eight percent of U.S. oil needs through its 2.03 million barrels per day (bpd) production of high-grade low-sulfur bonny crude.
Earlier this month, Nigerian officials signed a new memorandum of understanding with the major oil multinational operators which both sides hope will lead to an increase in oil output, easing pressure on pump prices in the West.
Next month, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo will meet with other leaders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and press the case for an increase in Nigeria's quota from seven to 10 percent of OPEC's total.
The government earlier this month pledged to increase output to three million bpd by 2003.
The government said that for its plans over the next five years, the industry needs to invest 40 billion dollars.
For that, the support of the six main multinational oil companies operating in Nigeria will be crucial, officials here say.
U.S. groups Chevron, Mobil and Texaco, France's Totalfina/Elf, Italy's Agip and Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell currently account for around almost all Nigeria's oil output.
The new memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed earlier this month was the result of five years of negotiations, and replaces an agreement signed in 1991.
Ron Van Den Berg, the managing director of Royal Dutch/Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), said the agreement was "a major win for both government and the oil industry in Nigeria".
"The MOU will provide the fiscal stability that is required to gear the industry toward meeting the growth aspirations of the nation in the oil and gas sectors and will hopefully continue to attract the huge investments required to achieve these goals" he said.
However he said stability in the troubled oil producing region was also important, he said.
Though it is the main source of the nation's wealth, the oil-producing Niger Delta region has little to show for it after years of hardline military rule and is regularly the seen of guerrilla-style attacks and lawlessness.
Obasanjo's government has promised development of the area and increased spending on its people but few results have been shown so far.
For the oil companies, the main response is to seek to develop more offshore fields where production costs are higher but disruption less likely.
Already a series of finds have been made in deep and ultra-deep waters off the coast.
Two months ago, Obasanjo visited Norway, an oil producer with greater experience of deep water technology, to discuss technical assistance to the oil industry in Nigeria.
Clinton is scheduled to visit Nigeria at the end of next week.