Nigeria has set an ambitious target of reaching three million barrels of crude oil production per day by 2030.
The ambition is significant, but achieving it will depend less on the size of Nigeria’s resource base and more on how effectively the industry converts opportunities into producing wells and sustainable barrels.
The challenge before Nigeria is no longer simply one of resource availability. We have the reserves, experienced professionals, an expanding indigenous operator base and a service industry with growing technical capability.
The bigger challenge is execution.
How quickly can projects move from concept to sanction, from sanction to the rig, and ultimately from the rig to first oil? How effectively can operators manage cost, schedule, interfaces, and operational risks? And how can the industry collaborate rather than repeatedly building parallel capacity?
These questions should increasingly shape the conversation around Nigeria’s production aspirations. This focus on execution is also reflected in the perspective of Hassannah Adenuga Salami, an energy professional in the oil and gas industry with experience across well engineering, completions and project delivery.
Her experience highlights the importance of looking beyond production targets to how efficiently projects are planned, delivered, and brought into production.
From more barrels to more efficient barrels
The industry understandably focuses on production volumes. However, Nigeria should also focus on the efficiency with which those barrels are delivered.
A barrel brought online months earlier has economic value. A well delivered with lower non-productive time has economic value. A rig campaign that reduces repeated mobilisation and demobilisation has economic value.
The objective, therefore, should not simply be more barrels, but efficient barrels: safely delivered, cost-competitive and brought to production within predictable timelines.
This is where Integrated Project Management (IPM), turnkey contracting and other integrated delivery models can become important.
Rather than managing numerous contractors with fragmented responsibilities, operators can integrate engineering, drilling, completions, well services, logistics and project management around clearly defined delivery objectives.
When structured properly, this can reduce interfaces, improve accountability and accelerate decision-making.
But IPM is not a magic solution; poorly structured integrated contracts can simply transfer inefficiencies from one contracting model to another.
Success depends on clear scope definition, appropriate risk allocation, competent project leadership, transparent commercial structures and measurable performance indicators.
The question should therefore not be whether Nigeria needs more IPM or turnkey contracts. It should be how we design them better.
Collaboration could unlock another level of efficiency
There is another opportunity that deserves greater industry attention: shared resources and collaborative campaigns.
Operators frequently execute drilling and development programmes independently, even where assets are located within similar geographical areas.
Yet rigs, marine vessels, helicopters, warehouses, logistics bases, specialised tools and other resources represent significant portions of project expenditure.
Where technically and commercially feasible, operators could coordinate campaigns and share selected infrastructure and services.
Imagine several operators within the same basin aligning their drilling schedules and utilising a rig sequentially rather than each independently mobilising similar equipment.
The potential benefits are significant: lower mobilisation costs, reduced idle time, improved equipment utilisation, greater negotiating leverage and potentially faster project execution.
This thinking is already consistent with the direction of Nigeria’s upstream regulator. NUPRC has highlighted cluster and nodal development strategies as mechanisms for using shared infrastructure, capturing economies of scale, reducing project costs and shortening development timelines.
Collaboration should therefore become more than an occasional commercial arrangement. It can become part of Nigeria’s production-growth strategy.
We must rethink what ‘Lowest Cost’ means, and procurement.
The lowest-priced contract does not necessarily deliver the lowest-cost barrel.
Consider a contractor whose commercial proposal is marginally higher but whose technical capability, equipment reliability and execution model bring a well online several weeks earlier.
The additional production gained through earlier first oil may substantially exceed the initial contract-price difference.
Commercial evaluations should therefore increasingly consider total value delivered, rather than focusing predominantly on initial price.
Performance-based contracting can help.
Contract structures can reward outcomes such as reduced non-productive time, improved safety, faster well delivery, cost optimisation and accelerated production.
When operators and contractors succeed economically from the same outcomes, behaviours begin to align.
Indigenous capability must evolve with the opportunity
The changing upstream landscape also creates a major opportunity for Nigerian service companies. But indigenous participation must continue evolving beyond the provision of personnel and individual services.
Nigeria needs more local companies capable of integrating engineering, wells delivery, project management, technology, logistics and commercial responsibility.
That requires investment in systems, people, governance, technology and partnerships.
It also requires operators to evaluate indigenous companies not simply by the services they currently provide, but by the capabilities they can build when given appropriately structured opportunities.
The emergence of stronger Nigerian integrated service companies would create employment, retain more value locally and deepen the technical capacity required to sustain production growth.
Technology is an enabler, not the strategy
Digitalisation also has an important role to play. Real-time operational monitoring, digital well planning, predictive analytics, remote operations and integrated performance dashboards can improve decision-making and identify problems earlier.
But technology by itself will not solve execution challenges. Its value comes when technical, operational and commercial information is connected, allowing decision-makers to see emerging risks and act quickly.
The objective should therefore not be digitalisation for its own sake, but technology that improves execution.
Leadership will ultimately determine the outcome
Nigeria’s 3 million barrels per day ambition cannot be delivered by operators alone. It requires alignment among government, regulators, asset owners, financiers, service companies and the professionals responsible for execution.
NUPRC’s Project 1MMBOPD initiative itself recognises the importance of collaboration across operators, service providers, financiers and other participants in the upstream value chain.
Government and regulators must continue creating an enabling environment. Operators must improve project maturation and execution discipline. Service companies must strengthen their capacity to take greater responsibility for delivery. And industry leaders must become more willing to collaborate where collaboration creates value.
Nigeria does not lack opportunities.
What will determine whether we reach the next production milestone is our ability to convert opportunities into executable projects, projects into producing wells, and producing wells into sustainable barrels.
IPM and turnkey delivery can contribute to that journey. Shared rigs and infrastructure can contribute. Technology can contribute. Better commercial models can contribute.
But none of these will work effectively without disciplined planning, competent people, strong leadership and accountability for results.
The path to three million barrels per day will therefore require more than investment.
It will require a fundamental shift towards integrated thinking, collaboration and execution excellence. Because ultimately, production targets are set in boardrooms and policy documents, but barrels are delivered in the field.