The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has revealed that recent reforms in the country's oil and gas sector have unlocked over 24 billion dollars in fresh capital investments, with an additional 10 billion dollars currently in the pipeline, as the national oil company intensifies its drive to achieve a three million barrels per day production target through a combination of artificial intelligence adoption, digital transformation and strategic portfolio restructuring.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Bayo Ojulari, who was represented by the Executive Vice President for Upstream, Udobong Ntia, disclosed this on Thursday at the 2026 Oloibiri Lecture and Energy Forum held in Abuja, where policymakers, industry leaders and academics gathered under the theme "Beyond the Three Million Barrels Target: Harmonising Digitalisation, Capital and Policy Frameworks for Intelligent Operations and Asset Optimisation."
Ojulari told the forum that the resolution of long-standing disputes and previously stalled Final Investment Decisions had significantly restored investor confidence in Nigeria's upstream sector. He attributed a substantial portion of the new investment inflows to just two projects, while disclosing that the Bosi project had recently passed gate one with its operators, and that the Owowo field represented an additional 10 billion dollars not yet factored into the already confirmed figures. Taken together, he said, Nigeria's potential investment pipeline now stood at approximately 34 billion dollars, combining confirmed and prospective inflows, which he described as a powerful signal of renewed global appetite for the country's oil and gas opportunities.
Beyond the funding dimension, the NNPC boss delivered a stark warning to the industry on the imperative of embracing artificial intelligence, saying that any operator that failed to make the digital transition would find itself buried under the weight of uncompetitive costs. He said the company had already invested heavily in digitising its data but stressed that digitisation alone was worthless without the capability to mine and make use of that information.
"I've been preaching AI for a long time, and it has now become an imperative. If we don't do it, we're going to be buried, frankly. It is no longer a nice-to-have. It is an absolute necessity. We have spent a lot of money digitising our data, but if we don't mine it, we will lose one of the most critical variables in the oil industry," he said.
Ojulari noted that Nigeria was sitting on decades of untapped data stretching back to the first commercial oil discovery in 1956, much of which remained locked in paper logs and unanalysed seismic records. He argued that unlocking that data through modern technology alone could put the three million barrels per day target within reach within the next three to four years, provided the industry moved with urgency and discipline.
He outlined a three-stage strategy that NNPC was executing to achieve the production target. The first was protecting existing assets and entrenching a maintenance culture that treated facilities as productive regardless of age, a practice he said was commonplace in more advanced oil-producing environments but largely absent in Nigeria. The second was accelerating near-term production growth through innovative financing and commercial arrangements, including alternative funding structures and optimised risk-sharing models designed to fast-track mature projects capable of delivering incremental barrels quickly. The third was a strategic portfolio review aimed at unlocking value, deepening indigenous participation and attracting new capital and technical capabilities to the sector.
Ojulari also praised the impact of the Petroleum Industry Act, saying it had eliminated the long-standing problem of cash call arrears that had previously strangled joint venture operations and deterred investment. He credited the Act, along with a series of executive orders signed by President Tinubu, with creating the regulatory clarity and predictability that capital markets required before committing to long-term energy investments.
Also speaking at the forum, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, said Nigeria already possessed the technical intelligence to transform its energy sector and that what had previously been missing was political will, which he said President Tinubu had now clearly demonstrated through executive actions and reforms. Ekpo described the Petroleum Industry Act as a watershed moment for the sector, saying it provided clarity, predictability and a framework that supported innovation and long-term value creation. He emphasised that the push to grow oil production must run in parallel with increased gas utilisation, describing natural gas not merely as a transition fuel but as a catalyst for industrialisation, power generation and export diversification. He added that digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation, would reduce downtime and improve efficiency across the sector, but warned that capital would only follow where stability and clear returns on investment were guaranteed.
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