WordPress cannot find the (present, loaded) mysqli – why?

I am setting up a small integration that is an off-WP cronjob to export some post data and send them to Google Drive. System works perfectly on DEV server. On production, no matter what, the log file ends up with

Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.

Please check that the mysqli PHP extension is installed and enabled.

If you are unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress support forums.

The mysqli extension is present and is loaded (chected via command line as well as php info page).

Tried to disable security plugins in case but no dice.

What can be the problem?