Nigeria may find itself in one of the world’s hottest oil exploration zones, but it is struggling to meet its own targets of boosting oil production capacity by a third by 2010.

The government has maintained for years that it would boost reserves to 40bn barrels and capacity to 4m barrels a day by 2010, extending that to 5m b/d by 2020 with a corresponding rise in reserves to 50bn barrels.