ABUJA — Nigeria’s oil and gas industry could be entering a new investment cycle after years of capital flight, but a severe shortage of skilled technical professionals could constrain the sector’s ability to execute complex upstream projects, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has warned.
Commission Chief Executive, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, said Nigeria’s annual oil and gas investment plunged from about $24 billion in 2014 to roughly $2 billion in 2023, a decline of more than 90 per cent that weakened not only exploration and project development but also the industry’s human-capital base.
According to Eyesan, the prolonged investment downturn forced companies to cut exploration and development budgets, triggering an exodus of geoscientists, petroleum engineers and other specialised professionals from the industry.
She warned that if investment now accelerates faster than the rebuilding of Nigeria’s technical workforce, the country could face a new bottleneck just as upstream activity begins to recover.
Eyesan spoke during a “Setting the Agenda” panel on Local Content and Human Capital under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 and Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) at the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) Human Capacity Development Conference and Expo at the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, Delta State.
Oil Investment Collapse Depleted Technical Workforce
Eyesan said geoscientists were among the first professionals affected as companies reduced exploration spending during the prolonged downturn.
Petroleum engineers were subsequently hit as the contraction deepened, with some workers made redundant while others were increasingly confined to maintenance roles as operators shifted from expansion to survival.
The result, she said, was a loss of institutional knowledge and technical capacity at a time when Nigeria was already struggling to attract sufficient new investment into exploration and production.
The situation has become more pressing as upstream activity begins to recover following reforms under the PIA and investment-oriented policies introduced by the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
“Training curricula need to evolve,” Eyesan said, stressing that Nigeria remains behind where it needs to be in developing the specialised competencies required by the modern oil and gas industry.
Deep Offshore Incentives Could Accelerate Demand for Skills
The warning comes as the Federal Government introduces new incentives aimed at improving the economics of deep offshore oil and gas projects.
President Tinubu on August 6, 2026, signed the Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives (Tax Remission) Order, 2026, providing production tax credits for qualifying deep offshore developments and seeking to improve the commercial viability of projects that reach Final Investment Decision within the specified timeframe.
The policy is expected to support new investment in Nigeria’s offshore petroleum resources, potentially increasing demand for specialised engineering, geoscience, project-management and technical services.
Eyesan said the industry was already moving in a positive direction, with renewed investment and project development creating an urgent need to rebuild the professional workforce.
For Nigeria, however, the challenge is no longer simply attracting capital. The country must also ensure it has enough skilled professionals to convert investment commitments into producing assets.
Digital Oilfield Requires New Skills
Eyesan said Nigeria could no longer rely on training programmes designed primarily around an earlier generation of petroleum operations.
She identified digitalised operations, advanced geoscience, digital twins and digital drilling technologies among the competencies that should become central to workforce development.
Modern upstream projects increasingly require professionals who can integrate subsurface data, real-time field information, automation, modelling and advanced analytics into investment and operational decisions.
She therefore urged training institutions, regulators, operators and universities to move beyond replacing workers lost during the investment downturn and instead build a workforce capable of operating the digital oilfield of the next investment cycle.
Nigeria Needs Commercially Savvy Engineers
Eyesan also linked human-capital development to Nigeria’s ability to compete for international oil and gas investment.
Using the analogy that capital behaves like water and flows towards areas of least resistance, she argued that Nigerian professionals must develop stronger commercial awareness if the country is to capture more value from renewed upstream investment.
Technical professionals, she said, increasingly need to understand the commercial implications of their decisions, while commercial professionals require sufficient technical knowledge to operate effectively within increasingly complex energy projects.
The convergence of technical and commercial skills will become increasingly important as oil companies assess project economics, deploy advanced technologies and compete for capital in a more disciplined global energy market.
Skills Forecasting Needed to Support New Investment
Eyesan called for a fundamental shift in Nigeria’s approach to oil and gas human-capacity development.
Rather than training workers only to fill existing vacancies, she said the industry should anticipate the skills it will need several years ahead and begin developing those competencies before shortages emerge.
She urged operators, regulators, training institutions and universities to establish stronger links for developing a coordinated talent pipeline capable of responding to changes in upstream technology, project development, energy markets and operating practices.
The objective, she said, should be to ensure that Nigeria’s workforce evolves alongside the industry rather than reacting to skills shortages after they have become critical.
Local Content Faces New Test
The skills challenge also has implications for Nigeria’s local-content ambitions.
Eyesan positioned human capital as a central pillar of the next phase of local-content development, arguing that regulations alone cannot guarantee sustained Nigerian participation in the oil and gas value chain if the country lacks the specialised expertise required by increasingly sophisticated projects.
The immediate test for Nigeria will therefore be whether the country can convert renewed investor interest into a broader industrial ecosystem in which Nigerian engineers, geoscientists, technicians, service companies and professional firms capture a larger share of the value generated by new upstream developments.
With investment conditions improving and deep offshore incentives being deployed to revive project economics, rebuilding the technical workforce could determine how much of the next oil investment cycle translates into production growth, local jobs, technology transfer and domestic value creation.
