By Kingsley Mordi (Ph.D.)
Every few months someone asks whether Nigeria can really reach 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2030. At the fifth anniversary of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) in Abuja, Ademola Adeyemi-Bero, Nigeria’s Governor to OPEC and Chief Executive of First E&P, answered by changing the question. He called his session an engagement rather than a lecture, because the upstream is at an inflection point, and he urged the industry to stop asking whether the target is possible and work out what it takes. I agree with him, and his numbers explain why.
He began with money. Adeyemi-Bero put current upstream spending at a little under $10 billion a year. To move from about 1.8 million barrels per day to 3 million, he said, the industry would have to spend between $25 billion and $30 billion every year. The barrels tell the same story. Existing fields decline, so the gap is bigger than the 1.2 million barrels the headline target suggests. Nigeria needs to add between 1.5 million and 2 million barrels per day by 2030, because a field that is not replaced simply falls away.
To help his audience picture that volume, he pointed to Bonga Southwest, which is expected to deliver 180,000 barrels per day when it comes on stream. At that size Nigeria needs roughly eight such projects. He added that developments of 30,000 barrels per day, even 20,000, are all needed, and that once momentum builds across projects of every size the arithmetic starts to work. That leaves a lot of room for smaller operators.
The obvious objection is that the capital will not be there, and Adeyemi-Bero answered it with Guyana. Ten years ago nobody was talking about it. Today it produces about 600,000 barrels per day, with a path to a million within roughly six years, and it got there without an industry in place. Nigeria already has one. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie have noted that upstream investment here peaked at about $29 billion in real terms in 2014 before falling to just over $5 billion in 2024, so money on the scale he describes has been spent in Nigeria before.
Some of it is now returning. NUPRC has approved 120 field development plans worth about $47.6 billion since 2024, and the projects are expected to add 1.74 million barrels of oil per day to production capacity. Government has also issued the Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Project Incentive Tax Remission Order 2026, designed to unlock up to $50 billion, starting with Bonga Southwest. I would still add a word of caution. An approved plan has to get through a final investment decision, find rigs and equipment, and secure a way to evacuate the crude before any oil flows, and recent industry analysis lists capital, pipelines and equipment among the main constraints.
Output is already at about 1.82 million barrels per day, so the recovery is real. NUPRC’s chief executive has also identified more than 788,000 barrels per day of shut-in production across 63 operators. Bringing those barrels back is the quickest gain available, though it will not take Nigeria to 3 million by itself.
Adeyemi-Bero’s point was that failure starts when we stop because the task is hard. From where I sit, the figure to watch over the next two or three years is how many of those 120 approved plans reach a final investment decision. That will tell us more about 2030 than any target announced at a ceremony.
Kingsley Mordi (Ph.D.) has spent over two and a half decades in the oil and gas industry, where his work has covered upstream infrastructure, regulatory compliance, government relations and the management of energy businesses. His academic background includes a doctorate in Strategic Marketing, a master’s degree, an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Economics. He is a member of NAEЕ, NES, NIPR, NIM, IORM and APCON, among other professional bodies. He can be reached at kingsleymordi.ng@gmail.com.
