$194BN VANISHES! HOW NIGERIA BLED 90% Of Oil INVESTMENTS IN 9 YEARS — NUPRC CRIES OUT
GREATRIBUNETVNEWS–NIGERIA has lost a staggering $194 billion in upstream petroleum investments in just nine years, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has revealed.
Annual capital inflow into the sector crashed from $24 billion in 2014 to a paltry $2 billion in 2023— a jaw-dropping 90% wipeout.
NUPRC Chief Executive, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, dropped the bombshell at the OGTAN Conference in Warri, Delta State, warning that the massive cash drought not only killed exploration and field development but wiped out Nigeria’s prized technical workforce.
She lamented that as oil firms switched to survival mode, geoscientists and top professionals were sacked in droves, projects were frozen, and talent fled the country — a brain drain now haunting the industry as investments trickle back.
As the contraction deepened, other core petroleum professionals were similarly affected, with some rendered redundant while others became confined largely to maintenance functions as operators abandoned expansion plans and concentrated on sustaining existing assets.
Eyesan warned that the industry could now be heading into a new skills crisis at precisely the point when Nigeria is seeking to rebuild upstream investment and accelerate oil and gas production.
She said the prolonged reduction in exploration and development activity had created a gap between the technical manpower available in the country and the sophisticated skills that would be required to execute a new generation of complex upstream projects.
The emerging challenge, she cautioned, could also undermine the progress recorded under Nigeria’s local content policy if investment growth outpaces the development of indigenous technical capacity.
According to her, accelerating investment without a corresponding expansion of the local skills base could result in a situation where Nigerian Content delivery suffers a setback, as operators are forced to rely increasingly on expatriate expertise to execute specialised projects.
The warning comes as the upstream sector enters a period of renewed optimism following a series of policy and fiscal measures introduced by the Tinubu administration to restore investment competitiveness.
Eyesan identified the President Bola Tinubu administration’s Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives (Tax Remission) Order, 2026, signed on August 6, as one of the latest measures expected to stimulate fresh investment in deep offshore developments.
She explained that the incentives were designed to improve the commercial viability of qualifying projects reaching Final Investment Decision within the specified period, thereby strengthening the prospects for renewed project development and exploration.
The NUPRC chief executive also linked the emerging investment recovery to the Petroleum Industry Act and other business-oriented reforms introduced by the administration, saying the measures were beginning to restore investor confidence and revive exploration activity.
But while the return of capital is being welcomed as critical to rebuilding production and government revenues, Eyesan said the industry must simultaneously address the workforce deficit created during the years of underinvestment.
She stressed that the anticipated increase in upstream activity would generate immediate demand for highly specialised professionals capable of handling increasingly complex exploration, drilling, production and field-development operations.
For Nigeria’s local content agenda, therefore, the next phase of petroleum investment presents a dual challenge: attracting enough capital to reverse years of declining upstream activity while ensuring that the technical workforce needed to capture a substantial share of the resulting economic opportunities is available.
The experience of 2014–2023, Eyesan’s warning suggests, has demonstrated that investment contraction can destroy technical capacity almost as quickly as it destroys projects. The return of investment without a deliberate and accelerated programme to rebuild that capacity could consequently leave Nigeria with the paradox of having projects to execute but insufficient indigenous expertise to execute them.
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