ONE of the less visible components of NNPC’s 2025 performance was the attempt to institutionalise cost consciousness across the organisation.The company’s financial performance shows that profitability improved even as its top line came under pressure. Management attributed this partly to cost optimisation, recovery of outstanding receivables and improved operating efficiency. That approach reflects a broader cultural change that Ojulari and his management team have repeatedly emphasised. Under the emerging ‘NNPC Way’, the company is organising its corporate culture around four broad principles: Enterprise First, Execution Excellence, Profitable Growth and Partner of Choice. The message is that the new NNPC cannot continue to treat every business as viable simply because it is owned by the national oil company.
Every business, according to the management philosophy, must have a credible pathway to profitability. Where restructuring is required, it must be undertaken. Where investment can generate future value, capital should follow. Where a business cannot justify its continued existence, difficult decisions may become unavoidable. This is also where the Petroleum Industry Act becomes significant. The PIA transformed NNPC from a statutory corporation dependent on government budgetary processes into a commercially oriented limited liability company. The management argues that the change has fundamentally altered the company’s incentives, particularly around receivables, expenditure and accountability. Ojulari’s message to debtors has been unusually direct: companies owing NNPC for crude oil, gas and other transactions must pay.
The new culture, therefore, is not merely about reducing expenditure. It is about changing the institutional mindset from one of entitlement to one of commercial accountability. That transformation is also reflected in NNPC’s workforce strategy. More than 1,000 young professionals were recruited and subjected to a one-year internship and training programme before deployment across the organisation. Ojulari said the programme is designed to combine the experience of older professionals with emerging talent, digital capabilities and international operating practices. Women now account for 23 percent of NNPC’s leadership positions, compared with the 17 percent industry average cited by the company.
For Ojulari, however, people development is ultimately about business performance. Our ambition depends as much on people as it does on oil wells and pipelines,’ he said. That statement captures one of the central themes of the new NNPC: assets alone cannot deliver the company’s ambitions without the human capacity to operate them efficiently. Beyond Rehabilitation: A New Bet On Refineries Perhaps nowhere is the change in philosophy more evident than in NNPC’s approach to its refineries. For years, the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries was largely conceived around government-funded contracts. The model produced expenditure but failed to deliver the sustained operational performance expected from the facilities.
Ojulari’s management is attempting to break from that cycle through the Technical Equity Partnership model. Under the proposed arrangement, prospective technical partners would not simply be paid to operate or maintain the refineries. They would have equity exposure and, consequently, a direct financial interest in ensuring that the assets operate efficiently and sustainably. The distinction is crucial. An operator working under a conventional contract may be paid regardless of whether the underlying business ultimately generates an acceptable return. An equity partner, by contrast, has capital at risk and therefore has a commercial incentive to ensure that the refinery performs.
That is the logic behind NNPC’s new approach. The company began with more than 50 potential partners before narrowing the field to about 20. Prospective partners subsequently undertook extensive due diligence, including intrusive on-site inspections involving more than 30 technical experts At the time of Ojulari’s briefing, negotiations had not produced a final agreement. But the philosophy behind the process was already clear. The GCEO argued that previous rehabilitation efforts failed partly because contractors and financiers did not have sufficient ‘skin in the game’. NNPC carried much of the financial and operational risk.
The new model seeks to distribute that risk. There is another dimension to the refinery strategy: technology. During a recent visit to China, Ojulari said he observed petrochemical facilities operating at levels significantly above their original nameplate capacity through bottleneck optimisation, technology deployment and close operational monitoring. For Nigeria, this presents a different question from merely getting refineries to operate. It is whether the refineries can become commercially competitive. Refining margins can be thin. Consequently, the business case may depend not only on processing crude but also on scale, efficiency and petrochemical integration. That is why the emerging strategy goes beyond rehabilitation towards building an integrated downstream platform.
Rebuilding the Crude Oil Production Base. The refinery strategy is only one part of a much larger investment programme. NNPC has set itself a target of increasing crude oil production to two million barrels per day by 2027 and three million barrels per day by 2030. The company also plans to mobilise about $60 billion in investment across the upstream, midstream and downstream segments by 2030. The scale of the ambition becomes clearer when placed against current production. Crude oil and condensate production reached a five-year high of 1.77 million barrels per day in 2025, while gas supply reached a three-year high of 7.2 billion standard cubic feet per day. Moving from 1.77 million barrels per day to three million barrels per day, however, will require substantially more than improved field operations. It will require capital, new drilling, infrastructure, security, efficient project execution and stronger partnerships with international oil companies and indigenous producers.
Major pipeline availability has improved significantly, with NNPC reporting much stronger reconciliation factors than the extremely low levels historically associated with crude theft and pipeline losses.
The implication is significant: every barrel recovered from theft or pipeline disruption potentially strengthens both production and the economics of the upstream business.
Gas Infrastructure: From Projects To Economic Activity
The same logic applies to gas. The completion of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline and the Obiafu-Obrikom-Oben pipeline is being presented by NNPC not merely as infrastructure achievement but as a foundation for wider industrial activity.
For AKK, the immediate challenge is moving from construction to utilisation, getting gas flowing to power plants, industries and other customers. The OB3 pipeline similarly provides an important link between gas supply sources and markets.
The strategic argument is that Nigeria’s gas resources should increasingly support domestic power generation, industrial production, fertiliser, petrochemicals and other energy-intensive industries.
NNPC’s longer-term target is to increase gas production substantially while mobilising investment across the energy value chain. The company’s 2030 outlook currently includes a target of 12 billion standard cubic feet per day of gas output, alongside the broader $60 billion investment mobilisation programme. Thus, the gas strategy is closely connected to the industrialisation argument.
From NNPC To Global Energy Major
All these initiatives ultimately point towards the same destination: an NNPC that management believes should operate to global commercial standards. Ojulari has repeatedly argued that NNPC should not think of itself merely as a Nigerian company whose fortunes are tied to government decisions. His ambition is for the company to become a formidable, resilient and commercially focused global energy player.
That aspiration is also linked to the company’s plan to prepare for a future listing. NNPC has commenced listing-readiness work covering the group and its subsidiaries. The first stage involves diagnostics and identifying gaps that must be addressed before the company can meet the transparency, governance, financial reporting and performance requirements associated with a publicly listed company.
Importantly, no date has been fixed for an initial public offering. Management’s immediate responsibility is to build the systems and track record required for readiness, while the shareholder would ultimately determine whether and when an actual listing takes place.
For Ojulari, credibility is therefore becoming a form of corporate capital.
He has pointed to improved relationships with banks and greater visibility to short, medium and long-term financing facilities as evidence that the company is gradually rebuilding confidence among financial institutions. His broader philosophy is encapsulated in an ambition to reach the level of global national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco.
The idea is not simply to become bigger. It is to become sufficiently credible, profitable and resilient that capital seeks the company rather than the company constantly seeking capital.
‘Capital should be looking for you, not you looking for capital,’ is the principle Ojulari has used to describe that ambition.
The Test Ahead
The transformation NNPC is pursuing is therefore larger than a financial statement. The N7.2 trillion profit demonstrates that efficiency can improve even when revenue comes under pressure. But sustaining that performance while investing heavily in production, gas infrastructure, refineries and human capital will present a different challenge.
The company must simultaneously protect profitability, increase crude and gas output, make its refineries commercially sustainable, attract billions of dollars in investment and maintain the discipline that produced the 2025 result.
Its own numbers provide both evidence of progress and a higher benchmark. Crude production has improved. Gas supply has strengthened. Profit has risen. Government remittances have increased. The company has begun restructuring its approach to costs, talent, partnerships and capital.
But the targets ahead are considerably larger. Three million barrels per day by 2030. A substantially expanded gas business. $60 billion in investment mobilisation. Commercially viable refineries. Greater transparency and listing readiness. And, ultimately, an NNPC capable of competing with major global energy companies.
That makes the 2025 result less a conclusion than a test of a new corporate model. As Ojulari himself put it, strong performance raises the bar.
‘For us, having a good performance is not just easy. It means that the bar has been set one level higher. So we now need to focus on building the capacity to deliver.’
The next phase, therefore, will determine whether NNPC can convert financial strength into productive assets, stronger energy security, sustainable profitability and a globally competitive energy business.
The N7.2 trillion profit has changed the conversation.