Nigeria’s national oil company is repositioning itself around commercial discipline and partnerships after years of underperformance, with its chief executive telling a global energy audience on Tuesday that execution is now the country’s defining priority.
Bashir Bayo Ojulari, group chief executive officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd., addressed CERAWeek 2026 in Houston on Monday, outlining how Nigeria plans to convert its proven reserves into sustained revenue as competition for energy investment intensifies globally.
Africa’s largest oil producer holds more than 600 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, according to the NNPC.
With hydrocarbon revenues still central to government financing and foreign exchange earnings across the continent, how Nigeria manages that resource base carries consequences well beyond its borders.
Ojulari said the Petroleum Industry Act, or PIA, has established regulatory certainty, infrastructure gaps are being addressed through targeted investment, and security architecture has been strengthened. “When the fundamentals are right, partnerships scale naturally,” he said.
The PIA, implemented in 2021, is gradually reshaping the oil and gas sector by streamlining regulations and fiscal structures, facilitating stalled projects and potentially boosting production efficiency.
Deepwater assets are a strategic priority, he added, because they offer scale and attract global capital with less exposure to onshore disruption.
He cited partnerships with Shell and Eni on deepwater blocks as examples of deals that bring technology and project discipline alongside financing.
On gas, Ojulari identified three conditions required to unlock the sector: commercial pricing across the value chain, critical pipeline infrastructure, including the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano corridor, and bankable contracts.
He described allocation between domestic supply and liquefied natural gas exports as a dynamic exercise in national and commercial value optimization.
“Capital goes where value is clear, and Nigeria has that value,” he told delegates.
CERAWeek 2026, hosted by S&P Global, runs from March 23-27 in Houston, bringing together more than 10,000 global energy leaders, executives and officials to explore the convergence of energy, technology and geopolitics.
Nigeria is a top African oil and gas producer with 38 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (10th globally) and 210 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (eighth globally).
