Nigeria lost more than 90 per cent of its annual upstream petroleum investment over the nine-year period between 2014 and 2023, with capital inflow into the sector collapsing from about $24 billion in 2014 to approximately $2 billion in 2023.

According to the Commission Chief Executive (CCE) of Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Mrs Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, the prolonged investment contraction not only weakened exploration, field development and production activities but also triggered a severe erosion of the technical workforce that now threatens to constrain the sector as fresh investments begin to return.

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Checks by Oracle Intelligence showed that the annual investment loss estimated at annual $21.6 billion amounts to significant $194.4 billion across the nine-year period. Former President Muhammdu Buhari rules the country in about eight years of the period.

Eyesan, who spoke at a conference organised by the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) in Warri, Delta State, said the cumulative loss in investment over the period created a prolonged period of financial and operational pressure across the upstream industry.

She explained that as capital expenditure declined, operating companies gradually shifted from development and expansion to survival, resulting in workforce reductions, project delays and the eventual migration of experienced professionals from the Nigerian petroleum industry.

The human-capital consequences, she noted, were particularly severe because geoscientists and other highly specialised professionals were among the first casualties of the investment downturn as companies responded to shrinking budgets by cutting exploration and development activities.

As the contraction deepened, other core petroleum professionals were similarly affected, with some rendered redundant while others became confined largely to maintenance functions as operators abandoned expansion plans and concentrated on sustaining existing assets.

Eyesan warned that the industry could now be heading into a new skills crisis at precisely the point when Nigeria is seeking to rebuild upstream investment and accelerate oil and gas production.

She said the prolonged reduction in exploration and development activity had created a gap between the technical manpower available in the country and the sophisticated skills that would be required to execute a new generation of complex upstream projects.

The emerging challenge, she cautioned, could also undermine the progress recorded under Nigeria’s local content policy if investment growth outpaces the development of indigenous technical capacity.

According to her, accelerating investment without a corresponding expansion of the local skills base could result in a situation where Nigerian Content delivery suffers a setback, as operators are forced to rely increasingly on expatriate expertise to execute specialised projects.

The warning comes as the upstream sector enters a period of renewed optimism following a series of policy and fiscal measures introduced by the Tinubu administration to restore investment competitiveness.

Eyesan identified the President Bola Tinubu administration’s Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives (Tax Remission) Order, 2026, signed on August 6, as one of the latest measures expected to stimulate fresh investment in deep offshore developments.

She explained that the incentives were designed to improve the commercial viability of qualifying projects reaching Final Investment Decision within the specified period, thereby strengthening the prospects for renewed project development and exploration.

The NUPRC chief executive also linked the emerging investment recovery to the Petroleum Industry Act and other business-oriented reforms introduced by the administration, saying the measures were beginning to restore investor confidence and revive exploration activity.

But while the return of capital is being welcomed as critical to rebuilding production and government revenues, Eyesan said the industry must simultaneously address the workforce deficit created during the years of underinvestment.

She stressed that the anticipated increase in upstream activity would generate immediate demand for highly specialised professionals capable of handling increasingly complex exploration, drilling, production and field-development operations.

For Nigeria’s local content agenda, therefore, the next phase of petroleum investment presents a dual challenge: attracting enough capital to reverse years of declining upstream activity while ensuring that the technical workforce needed to capture a substantial share of the resulting economic opportunities is available.

The experience of 2014–2023, Eyesan’s warning suggests, has demonstrated that investment contraction can destroy technical capacity almost as quickly as it destroys projects. The return of investment without a deliberate and accelerated programme to rebuild that capacity could consequently leave Nigeria with the paradox of having projects to execute but insufficient indigenous expertise to execute them.