Oil Industry Players Find Ways To Improve Crude Output Production At Elumelu’s Leadership Forum
• Players admits the challenge as theirs so the growth plan to deliver to Nigeria is a necessity.
Major stakeholders in the Nigerian oil and gas industry yesterday gathered in Abuja to brainstorm on ways to chart a roadmap to accelerating Nigeria’s crude production growth, which has been hobbled for about five years.
At the event, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri expressed optimism that Nigeria will easily meet the national budget’s oil production benchmark of 2.06 million bpd this year, judging by the circa 1.8 million bpd recorded in January 2025 and the current average production standing at 1.7 million bpd.
The meeting tagged: “Nigeria Petroleum Industry Leadership Discourse” was convened by the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Mr. Tony Elumelu under the aegis of Heirs Energies’ and was themed: “Nigeria’s Oil Production Growth Roadmap: Acceleration Imperatives”.
The forum had in attendance high profile oil and gas stakeholders, including Lokpobiri; Elumelu; Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Mr. Gbenga Komolafe and Chairman of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Board of Governors and Chief Executive Officer of FIRST E&P Limited, Mr. Ademola Adeyemi-Bero.
Also at the conference were: The Chief Executive Officer of Seplat Energy Plc, Mr. Roger Brown; Executive Vice President, (Upstream) Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Udobong Ntia; Chief Executive Officer of Heirs Energies Limited, Mr. Osa Igiehon and Chairman of Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie Okunbor.
Besides, the Executive Chairman of AA Holdings, Mr. Austin Avuru; Chief Executive Officer of Oando Energy Resources Limited, Dr Ainojie Irune; Group Chief Executive Officer of Transcorp, Dr Owen Omogiafor and Director at SLB, Dr Nosa Omorodion, amongst others, attended the event.
Speaking during a panel session at the forum, Lokpobiri recalled that Nigeria was producing about 1 million bpd when he became the minister, noting that production has increased to about 1.8 million bpd as of today.
“In January, we produced 1.8 million barrels. Komolafe, the chief executive of NUPRC is the one who has the statutory authority to report what we produce on a daily and a monthly basis. He has the responsibility to send reports to me and the report I have is that we had approximately 1.8 million barrels in January.
“It is true that the budget of 2025 is predicated on 2.06 million barrels a day and I want to assure Nigerians that this is doable. I’ve always told people that when I came, one of the briefs I got was that during COVID, we got 2.5 million barrels. One of the reasons why we are achieving what we are achieving is because everything has changed in Nigeria”, Lokpobiri stated.
He recalled that for over a decade, there was no investment in the Nigeria oil and gas industry, saying but since the current administration came into office, it has managed to change the perception about Nigeria, resulting in investments coming back to the sector.
Owing to reforms put in place by the current government, the minister said there has also been improvements in the security situation in the Niger Delta.
While commending the Nigerian military, the paramilitary and civilian contractors, he said the combined effort of these stakeholders have led to less infractions on the oil pipelines, leading to less theft and less pipeline vandalism. These, he said, led to the increased production being recorded.
He maintained that the reforms introduced in the system under President Bola Tinubu, who has provided strategic leadership for the oil and gas industry, has led to the end of bureaucracy in approval processes.
Lokpobiri said the government has also addressed the issue of inefficiency in the petroleum sector with the deployment of technology, noting that like the OPEC’s regulatory body, the NUPRC has also deployed technology in the management of the industry.
“I’ve had occasion to take some memos to council where we should deploy technology to be able to tackle issues affecting the upstream. Before now, everything was done manually. We couldn’t monitor real time what was happening in our terminals.
“We couldn’t monitor in real time when payments would be given. But the point is that technology has been deployed to ensure that we reduce the corruption that has existed in that sector in the past”, Lokpobiri added.
He pointed out that the industry had also benefited from increased collaboration with key industry stakeholders such as the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS) and the Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG), among others.
“You can see Shell and the International Oil Companies (IOCs) recently decided to invest in Bonga that has been in the pipeline for a long time. It’s because we’ve been able to engage ourselves, we have agreed, and more investments will come. So that our quest to get to 2.7 million by 2027 will just be an easy ride.
According to the minister, the president has done so much by the executive orders that he signed to accelerate growth in the sector.
“Before now, a contract in the oil and gas sector may take as long as three years. But when the president came, he said it shouldn’t be more than six months. You will agree with me that contracts below $10 million are within the exclusive powers of the operators.
“We also discovered that most of the contracts that were delayed for two, three years were below $10 million that needed NAPIM’s approval. But the president by executive order, said anything below $10 million should be within the powers of the operators. That has been a game changer.
“The reason why we are doing 1.8 million bpd today is because of some of these reforms that we have experienced today. And so going forward, we are willing to sustain the gains that we have made and improve on what we have done so far,” he added.
The NUPRC Chief Executive, Komolafe, said the rallying of industry stakeholders to launch the Project 1 Million Barrels Additional Production in October 2024 had started bearing fruits.
According to him, as of the period the programme was launched, the country was operating at about 1.5 million barrels of production per day.
“But good enough, between then and now, the industry has been able to add an additional 250,000 barrels incremental. And that is quite significant. So for now, we are operating at about 1.75 million barrels per day.
“But going forward, the commission has a line of sight on how to get to our target production of 2.5 million barrels per day. And in doing that, we have identified the key initiatives to actually achieve that target. We’ve identified the candidate wells that need to be reactivated, that needs to be reentered”, he stated.
In his remarks, CEO of Heirs Energies, Osa Igiehon, said Nigeria is currently seeing a lot of shifts in the oil and gas industry. He said one of shifts was the country being able to turn around the season of decline to one of growth, citing the 1.7 million bpd produced in January 2025.
He said: “The second shift we are seeing is that with the completion of the major divestments that have just come through, midwifed by the CCE, we are now looking at a situation where over 50 per cent, possibly 60 per cent of Nigeria’s oil production is now operated by indigenous companies, and for a lot of people, there’s trepidation that can we deliver?. There’s also optimism that we can deliver.
“Heirs Energies has been one of those companies that have stood strongly for growth as demonstrated by what we have achieved. Just like Nigeria is trying to accelerate its growth, we also have our motto for this leadership forum being ‘Growth Accelerated’.
He added: “So in that light, we felt it was important to bring together the industry to start talking about growth now that it is us indigenous companies that are in control of a larger proportion of the production.
‘We have to power it. We have to own the challenge and we have to deliver to the Nigerian people.”
