Nigeria’s oil and gas industry does not have a talent problem but a fractured talent pipeline, with critical mid-career professionals increasingly leaving for international markets just as they attain peak value to domestic operators.

Chairman of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), Engr. Wole Ogunsanya, whose presentation was delivered at a conference in Warri, Delta State,

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said the talent pipeline was structurally weak at three critical points, including the mid-career workforce, hands-on technical competence and readiness for emerging technologies.

While Nigerian universities continue to produce capable graduates and the country retains a pool of experienced senior professionals, he said the critical layer between the two is steadily thinning.

“The problem lies in what happens in between,” he said.

According to him, Nigeria is increasingly losing 10-to-15-year drilling engineers, completions specialists, remotely operated vehicle supervisors, and metering and instrumentation leads to international markets.

“We develop them, and global markets recruit them,” he said, describing the trend as one of the most serious operational constraints confronting PETAN members as investment and contracting opportunities return to the industry.

He noted that indigenous companies can secure contracts but still struggle to mobilise the specialist personnel required to execute them, creating a potentially damaging mismatch between rising business opportunities and available technical manpower.

PETAN also identified a widening gap between formal qualifications and practical competence. Ogunsanya said the challenge was not necessarily inadequate classroom knowledge but limited access in Nigeria to simulator time, supervised field experience and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) training. Where such opportunities are unavailable locally, indigenous companies are compelled to send personnel abroad, increasing costs and potentially leaving Nigerian-trained professionals less competitive against international peers.

He said the gap could be narrowed through stronger collaboration among universities, operators, OEMs and indigenous service companies, particularly by expanding opportunities for practical training within live industry operations.

The challenge, he added, is becoming more urgent as digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence increasingly shape the next generation of oil and gas projects. Nigeria, he stressed, is not short of innovation, citing a Nigerian AI-enabled subsurface solution that recently won the NCDMB Tech-Innovation Challenge in Yenagoa as evidence of the country’s capacity to develop relevant technologies.

The bigger challenge, he said, is developing enough professionals capable of safely deploying, validating and scaling such technologies in live operations.

Without addressing the three gaps simultaneously, Ogunsanya warned that Nigeria risks “localising yesterday’s services while importing tomorrow’s.”

Against this backdrop, PETAN is seeking a greater role in industry human-capacity development, with Ogunsanya saying the association wants to move from being a “consumer” to a “partner” in workforce development. He said members were already providing industry-based training but needed formal recognition, accreditation and greater scale.

The association is working with industry partners on structured graduate placements within live service-company operations, with additional proposals before international and indigenous operators. The objective, he said, is to move the initiative beyond pilot schemes and establish a systematic industry-wide model.

PETAN believes indigenous service companies provide a natural environment for practical training because “the best classroom in the industry is a live project.” A graduate embedded in a service company for 12 months, it said, can gain exposure to real equipment, operational procedures, clients, safety requirements, documentation and performance standards, transforming academic knowledge into practical competence.

To formalise the approach, PETAN is proposing that structured workplace placements in qualified service companies be recognised as certifiable training that can be counted, credited and funded by industry.

The association’s intervention underscores a growing concern as investment returns to Nigeria’s petroleum sector after years of underinvestment: increasing the number of graduates alone will not solve the industry’s manpower challenge. Nigeria must retain and develop the mid-career professionals who constitute the operational backbone of the industry while equipping the next generation to handle AI, automation and other technologies reshaping oil and gas.

The central issue, according to PETAN,  is for Nigeria to practically develop and continually upgrade the talents it produces fast enough to match the pace and sophistication of returning investment.