Minister of State for Petroleum,(Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri on Tuesday in Yenagoa said that efforts by the federal government to keep International Oil Companies, IOCs in the country through deliberate friendly economic policies has been yielding fruits.
Lokpobiri spoke at the 14th Practical Nigerian Content (PNC) Forum at the NCDMB Towers. The annual event was hosted by the Nigeria Content Development Monitoring Board and attracted all the major players in the oil and gas industry, as well as those from African countries.
He said contrary to what some Nigerians are made to believe, none of the oil majors left Nigeria, but that some of them, including Shell and Mobil, only divested and were now operating only offshore, while the new companies have continued to function onshore, with all of them still adding value to the nation’s economy.
He lamented that 10 years before the coming of the present government of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there was no investment in the oil and gas sector from IOCs, largely because of the unfriendly business climate.
But he said the current environment has become so friendly that the IOCs have found in Nigeria, a fertile ground to invest, because taxes and levies and other fiscal policies now wear a human face.
Lokpobiri said it took international consultants engaged by the federal government to review the many taxes that IOCs were made to pay, hence their decision to remain and do business in the country.
“No International Oil Company is leaving Nigeria. In fact, Chevron keeps saying they are going nowhere. But we must continue to do those things that will make them to remain with us.” He said there was a time in Nigeria’s history that some IOCs decided to move to Ghana and other African countries, but were to out that Nigeria still had a better business climate.
The minister said “we have restored the confidence of IOCs in Nigeria,” but lamented that deliberate efforts must be made to avoid discouraging the IOCs through high cost of projects.
“People seem not to understand the local content law. Our cost of project is the highest in the world, he added, ” even as he said there was no point awarding drilling jobs to local companies who lacked the capacity to handle them, only for them to outsource such jobs to the same foreign companies that were denied such jobs in the name of local content policy.
Also speaking in a keynote address, the presidential adviser on energy, Olu Arowolo Verheijen said “project delivery sits at the core of Nigeria’s upstream energy reforms. Project economics must remain competitive, timelines must be credible, and capital must be deployed with confidence. And a pragmatic, outcome focused local content regulations plus guidelines must be an accelerator of these objectives. Local content was never meant to be an end in itself; it is intended to be a means to a national outcome, projects delivered at scale, on schedule, and at competitive cost.
“This is why President Tinubu issued Presidential Directives 41 & 42 in February 2024, focused on local content compliance requirements, eliminating briefcase intermediaries, reducing petroleum-sector contracting costs and timelines, improving the ease of doing business, and repositioning Nigeria as the premier investment destination for oil and gas in Africa. The combined reforms introduced over the last two years enabled Nigeria to secure three of the four major FIDs recorded in Africa in 2024 and propelled us into the top quartile among 14 comparable global oil and gas jurisdictions.
She said for the country to achieve a streamlined project delivery, there was the need for all hands to be on deck. “it is not the responsibility of a single actor in the value chain. Federal and state governments, private sector players, financiers, local communities, all must work in aligned cooperation to guarantee project success.
“On our part as government, we have approached this responsibility with clarity and intention. In crafting our Presidential Directives, we adopted a data-driven modelling and benchmarking process to understand precisely how local content requirements influenced overall project costs.
“Our task was to design a system that eliminates rent-seeking while preserving the true meaning of local content: empowering Nigerian talent, enabling indigenous enterprise, strengthening national competitiveness and fostering capacity building amongst Nigerian Service providers to enable them compete for jobs across the continent and beyond.
“As the NCDMB advances towards its ambitious target of 70 percent in-country value retention, we must ensure that the journey is not reduced to box-ticking. It must consistently deliver tangible value, to the industry, to host communities, and to the wider Nigerian economy.”
On his part, the minister of state for petroleum(gas), Obong Ekperikpe Ekpo commended the leadership of the NCDMB for its dedication to strengthening local participation, expanding capacity, and deepening industrial integration remains central to our national aspirations.
“The Practical Nigerian Content Forum continues to thrive because of the Board’s strategic focus and effective coordination across industry stakeholders. For the gas sector, the PIA provides the architecture for a fully liberalised and investment-driven midstream and downstream environment. It ensures that infrastructure development, domestic supply obligations, pricing frameworks, and fiscal incentives are aligned toward unlocking Nigeria’s full gas potential.
Our national gas agenda is structured around clear and measurable priorities:
- Accelerating Gas Infrastructure Deployment: Projects such as the AKK Pipeline, OB3 Pipeline, the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic Gas Pipeline initiatives, ongoing expansions on the West African Gas Pipeline, as well as the Nigerian–Equatorial Guinea Gas Pipeline Project, which are opening new routes for monetisation and regional supply. In addition, we are in active discussions with the Government of Libya to explore new interconnections that will further strengthen African gas connectivity and expand access to both regional and international markets. Collectively, these projects are essential for connecting markets, powering industries, enhancing energy security, and driving deeper regional integration.
- Expanding Domestic Gas Utilisation: Under the Decade of Gas Initiative, we are scaling up CNG adoption, LPG penetration, the distribution of clean cooking solutions for women and youth, and the expansion of small- and large-scale LNG. These efforts directly address energy poverty while stimulating local enterprise and job creation.
- Enhancing Gas Production and Supply Security: We are implementing upstream incentives, fast-tracking gas development programmes, and supporting flare-commercialisation initiatives to ensure sustained feedstock for power generation, manufacturing hubs, and petrochemical expansion.
- Driving Industrial Development Through Gas: Gas is central to Nigeria’s future: fuelling fertiliser plants, methanol projects, petrochemical complexes, and gas-based industrial parks. Through partnerships with private investors, we are enabling projects that will accelerate value addition and improve national competitiveness.
- Promoting Clean Energy Transition and Environmental Stewardship: Gas remains Nigeria’s transition fuel. Our policies focus on reducing emissions, lowering carbon intensity, and ensuring that Nigeria plays a leadership role in Africa’s pathway toward cleaner and more sustainable energy systems.
He said the PNC Forum had become a platform for reaffirming our commitment to indigenous participation. According to him, “ local content is no longer a policy, it is now a national imperative and a strategic economic pillar.”
