By Olu Verheijen
Last year, I asked this gathering to judge our progress by four things: reserves, revenues, reliability and responsibility. Those tests still stand. Today, I want to put a larger question before us. What will Nigeria build with its next era of oil and gas production?
We have celebrated discoveries before. We know the excitement of announcing what lies beneath our soil. The harder task is to change what is possible for the people who live above it. That is the ambition I bring to “Unlocking More Barrels”: turning investment recovery into national productive strength. The next barrel must help build more than our production numbers. It must help build our country.
Consider the IMA gas field. Discovered in 1973, it reached a final investment decision in September 2026. More than half a century. A child born when that gas was discovered could have finished school, entered the workforce and raised a family before the decision to develop it was taken.
The gas did not suddenly appear in 2026. The conditions for investing in it changed.
For too long, Nigeria asked excellent geology to compensate for weaknesses elsewhere in the investment proposition: uncertain responsibilities, slow contracting, uncompetitive economics and unreliable routes to paying customers. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s leadership, we have set about changing that proposition. The President provided the mandate and political backing. Our team’s work began with the reform blueprint and continued through fiscal design, negotiations and implementation, alongside ministries, regulators, NNPC, operators and investors. We examined actual projects, benchmarked Nigeria against competing destinations and worked to remove the obstacles preventing investment decisions.
The fiscal principles were deliberate: reward production, protect existing revenues, keep the rules workable and tailor incentives to the resource. Time-bound eligibility encouraged investors to bring Nigerian projects forward in their portfolios. In gas, fiscal reform and commercial negotiation had to move together. Incentives could support development; access to customers and prices that justified investment could make it financeable. That is why opening opportunities for third-party gas supply to NLNG mattered.
Policy earns its value by changing a decision and enabling something real to proceed.
Ubeta and Bonga North reached final investment decisions in 2024. Since we last gathered, IMA has joined them. These decisions move projects into execution, commit capital and begin the work that will support future production. Our responsibility is to carry them through while improving output from assets already operating.
We have begun to change the investment story. We must now change the production story, and through it, the economic story.
This year’s theme gives us three practical responsibilities: exploration, local capability and adaptive technology. First, we must replenish the opportunity. A country cannot produce tomorrow what it does not discover, appraise or develop today. Nor can it sustain growth by celebrating the same discoveries for another generation.
We need reliable geological data, credible exploration programmes and development plans that account for infrastructure and markets from the outset. Better reservoir understanding, infill drilling and improved recovery can deliver nearer-term gains. But those gains must finance ambition, not replace it. Mature fields and the next generation of developments must advance together.
To operators, my challenge is straightforward: bring forward the programmes that replenish your portfolios. Identify the government decisions needed to unlock them. And demonstrate the capital, people and execution plans behind your proposals.
Second, we must build capability worthy of our ownership. The rise of Nigerian independents creates an opportunity to drive near-term onshore and shallow-water growth, while international companies concentrate on deepwater and integrated gas. Success depends on what each owner does with those assets. It requires sound governance, strong balance sheets, technical competence and obligations honoured to workers, communities and the environment.
Local content should leave Nigeria more capable after a project than before it began. It should mean engineers who can lead the next development and fabrication companies that can win work beyond our borders. It should give a young Nigerian the chance to master difficult work, not simply stand beside someone else doing it.
We should be proud of Nigerian ownership. We should be ambitious enough to demand Nigerian excellence.
Third, we must use technology to change performance. Better seismic interpretation can reveal what an older model missed. Reservoir modelling can improve recovery. Digital monitoring can reduce downtime and losses. Methane measurement can help preserve valuable gas. The test is what changes in the field: uncertainty reduced, costs lowered and operations made safer.
Artificial intelligence will expand what our professionals can do. It will not remove the need for good data and sound judgement. NAPE connects knowledge across companies and generations. Use that reach to deepen the skills this next phase requires.
These responsibilities matter far beyond the upstream sector. Investors have choices. New developments in Guyana and across Africa remind us that Nigeria must compete through the quality of its proposition. A disruption elsewhere may create an opening. It cannot be our business plan. Our projects must remain competitive when prices fall and new supply arrives.
Our greatest opportunity is larger than the next cargo. It is a more productive Nigeria and a more industrialised Africa. Energy poverty is also an industrialisation problem. Factories cannot compete without dependable power. Farmers cannot realise the full value of their harvest without processing, storage and transport. Young people cannot find enough productive work in an economy constrained by unreliable energy.
This is why oil, gas and power belong in one national strategy. Oil can strengthen export earnings and public finances. Gas can supply industry, electricity and export markets. But a gas field is only as bankable as the customer at the other end of the pipe.
Resolving legacy power debts, improving metering and targeting support to vulnerable consumers are therefore part of the same economic task. Suppliers need confidence they will be paid. Consumers need accurate bills and credible service.
Alongside renewables, stronger networks and greater efficiency, these reforms can build an energy system capable of supporting our ambitions.
We should manufacture more of what we consume, process more of what we produce and supply more of what our neighbours need. We should be able to trace the connection from a well to a business that grows, from a project to a skill that endures, from public revenue to public value.
A family struggling with the cost of living cannot spend a forecast. A business cannot run on a policy announcement. Nigerians are entitled to ask when reform will make their lives better. We owe them honest answers and sustained delivery.
President Tinubu’s mandate has opened the way for difficult changes. Government and industry must now make them endure beyond any one officeholder or investment cycle. Last year’s tests still apply: reserves, revenues, reliability and responsibility. Let us meet them through the projects we execute and the service our economy receives.
More than half a century separated the discovery of IMA’s gas from the investment decision to develop it. The young professionals here should not wait a working lifetime to see their country’s promise put to work. Let them inherit more than a catalogue of resources: an industry with the competence to develop them, institutions with the discipline to steward them, and an economy in which their talent has a future.
Let us unlock more barrels, and with them, a greater future for Nigeria.
**Text of address delivered by Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Verheijen at the 44th NAPE annual international conference and exhibition
