Abdullah al-Badri told Reuters, “we hope the price would rebound by the end of the second half of 2015.”

“We can’t see the market now,” he added, explaining that OPEC will have to wait until the end of the second half of 2015 to see how the market react to these low prices.OPEC, a cartel of 12 of the world’s leading oil producers, was formed five decades ago to secure steady income for member states and to collude in influencing world oil prices. But the drastic fall of global prices this year have dragged several of the body’s member countries, among them Nigeria and Angola, into a economic crisis. Last month the cartel refused to cut oil production, a mechanism it uses to boost or stabilise global oil prices, against the wishes of several of its members.

A Struggling OPEC Member

Nigeria leads the list of OPEC member countries who have been hard hit by the fall in global oil prices. Although oil only accounts for about 15 percent of the GDP of Africa’s largest economy, it makes up around 80 percent of government revenues and over 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings. The more than 45 percent decline in crude prices since the second half of the year has thus plunged the nation into an economic crisis, which has led to gloomy economic expectation of the coming year after several years of impressive growth.

Finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announce during the 2015 budget presentation last week, that the country’s economic growth projection has been cut to 5.5 percent, from an earlier 6.4 percent. The budget amounts to N4.3 trillion ($23 billion) on an oil price benchmark of $65 a barrel; this is down from $77.50 in the 2014 budget, and a significant cut on previous budgets.

IMF mission leader to Nigeria, Gene Leon, said last week that the country would witness slower growth and rise in inflation in 2015 because of the oil crisis. Leon explained that Nigeria’s fiscal and external buffers had shrunk since the last sharp oil drop in 2008, leaving little room for manoeuvring. “Compared to the onset of the 2008-09 financial crisis – the Excess Crude Account (ECA) in 2008 was $21 billion compared to $3 billion now, while gross international reserves was $52 billion,” he said.