Nigeria’s ongoing economic reforms must move beyond policy announcements to deliver the stability, predictability and investor confidence required to unlock fresh capital for the oil and gas industry, TotalEnergies Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited (TEPN) has said.

Country Chair and Managing Director of TEPN, Matthieu Bouyer, said the country has all the fundamentals required to remain a major energy investment destination, but warned that its enormous petroleum potential would have little economic meaning unless reforms translate into actual projects, higher production, jobs and sustainable value creation.

Bouyer declared at the PENGASSAN Energy and Labour Summit (PEALS) 2026, where he delivered a keynote address titled, “Removing Barriers to Business Growth in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry: TotalEnergies as a Case Study of E&P Expansion Amid Bureaucratic Bottlenecks and Regulatory Uncertainties.”

He made it clear that Nigeria’s biggest challenge is not absence of resources, but the inability to consistently convert the resources into bankable investments and project delivery.

“Nigeria does not lack potential. The real challenge is conversion,” Bouyer told an audience comprising government officials, regulators, industry operators, labour leaders and other stakeholders.

He urged the Federal Government to use the current reform window to strengthen the confidence of international investors and position Nigeria to compete more effectively for global capital.

According to him, Nigeria possesses the natural resources, skilled workforce, entrepreneurial capacity, industrial experience and growing energy demand needed to sustain a vibrant petroleum industry. What is required now is a business environment capable of turning those advantages into projects and production.

He warned that delays caused by bureaucracy, regulatory uncertainty and other institutional barriers carried consequences far beyond individual oil companies, affecting government revenues, employment, local content development, host communities, workers and, ultimately, the confidence of prospective investors.

Bouyer identified stability as the foundation for sustainable growth, arguing that government had a responsibility to establish clear policies, while regulators must ensure predictable implementation. Operators, he said, must complement this with disciplined investment and safe operations, while labour and host communities must contribute to industrial harmony, trust and shared responsibility.

He said industrial harmony ranks beyond a conventional labour-relations issue, describing it as a business enabler capable of supporting safety, production, investment and human-capital development.

“If Nigeria wants long-term jobs,” he said, “it must create the conditions for long-term projects, a competitive industry and a stable environment in which investors, workers and communities can see a future.”

The TotalEnergies executive said the competition for investment had become increasingly global, with investors comparing Nigeria with other petroleum-producing jurisdictions on the basis of fiscal terms, regulatory stability, project execution timelines, security, emissions intensity, cost structures and the likelihood that approved projects would actually be delivered.

He therefore acknowledged recent government measures, including the Petroleum Industry Act, fiscal incentives for non-associated gas and deepwater developments, initiatives to shorten contracting timelines and efforts to improve cost competitiveness, as evidence that Nigeria understood the need to make its petroleum industry more attractive to investors.

He however stressed that the ultimate test of reform was its ability to unlock investment and accelerate execution.

His reference to the recent exploration licensing rounds in 2024 and 2025 stressed the importance of exploration in this equation. Bouyer described exploration as the “renewal engine” of the petroleum industry, warning that without continuous exploration, reserves decline and with them the prospects for future production, investment, employment and Nigeria’s relevance in the global energy market.

For TotalEnergies, he said, Nigeria remained strategic and “home”, reflecting the company’s long-standing presence in the country dating back to 1956.

He said the company’s strategy was increasingly centred on operated assets where it could apply its technical capabilities to improve safety, operational efficiency, emissions performance and project delivery while creating value for Nigeria, its partners and other stakeholders.

He cited the Ubeta gas development as an example of how reforms could become tangible when policy, partnership and project maturity converge. TotalEnergies and NNPC Limited took the final investment decision on the project in 2024, demonstrating, according to Bouyer, that the most convincing evidence of reform is the successful unlocking of projects.

“Reform becomes real when it unlocks projects,” he said.

Gas, he added, would be particularly important to Nigeria’s economic transformation because of its capacity to support electricity generation, industrial development, domestic energy access, LNG exports and lower-emission growth.

But he cautioned that the country could not unlock its gas potential through policy declarations alone. Gas projects require infrastructure, bankable contracts, credible offtake arrangements, payment discipline, timely approvals and commercial frameworks capable of supporting long-term investments.

Bouyer also argued that emissions reduction should be treated as part of the industry’s economic value proposition rather than as a constraint on investment.

He said reducing flaring, recovering gas, cutting methane emissions and improving emissions measurement would make more molecules available for domestic consumption, export and integration into the wider gas value chain.

TotalEnergies, he disclosed, became the first E&P operator in Nigeria to eliminate routine flaring across all its operated assets at the end of 2023. The company is also working with NNPC Limited on AUSEA, a drone-based technology designed for high-precision monitoring of methane and carbon dioxide emissions, while more than 2,500 sensors have been installed across its operated assets to facilitate real-time methane-leak detection and faster intervention.

For Bouyer, therefore, environmental responsibility and energy development should not be treated as opposing objectives. Both, properly integrated, could strengthen the economic value Nigeria derives from its petroleum resources.

He also used the summit to acknowledge the role of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), describing the union as an essential participant in the investment conversation rather than an external actor.

He said the association represented professionals whose technical knowledge, discipline and institutional memory remained critical to the functioning and future of Nigeria’s energy industry.

Earlier, PENGASSAN President Festus Osifo explained that the summit’s focus on investment and business growth was deliberate, given the conditions investors require before committing capital to long-term projects.

Osifo warned that regulatory uncertainty and overlapping mandates among government agencies remained major threats to investment in the petroleum industry.

The warnings from both industry and labour leadership converge on a central challenge facing Nigeria’s reform programme: investors will ultimately judge reforms not by the number of policies announced, but by whether those policies create a predictable environment in which projects can be approved, financed, constructed and operated without prolonged uncertainty.

For a country seeking to increase oil and gas production, expand domestic gas utilisation, attract billions of dollars in new capital and preserve its relevance in an increasingly competitive global energy market, the message is clear. Nigeria has the resources and the market; what it must now demonstrate is the institutional capacity to convert both into investible, executable and sustainable economic value.