Eyesan Laments Decline in Nigeria’s Technical Talent Pool in Energy Sector

By Adedapo Adesanya

The chief executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Mrs Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, has lamented the decline in Nigeria’s technical and commercial talent pipeline.

She canvassed for the rebuilding of the critical talent needs as renewed investment returns to the country’s energy sector after years of underinvestment.

According to her, Nigeria is facing a depleted pool of geoscientists, petroleum engineers and other critical technical professionals, largely as a result of a drop in investments that saw many capable hands jump ship.

She emphasised that Nigeria’s annual oil and gas investment, which stood at about $24 billion in 2014, had fallen to roughly $2 billion by 2023, representing a decline of more than 90 per cent over the period.

Mrs Eyesan, therefore, warned that the country could face a new constraint if investment accelerates faster than the development of the technical workforce required to execute complex upstream projects.

She said the prolonged investment contraction did not only affect capital spending and exploration activity but also triggered a corresponding erosion of human capital, with geoscientists among the first professionals to leave the industry when companies began cutting budgets.

Mrs Eyesan made the remarks during a panel session on Local Content & Human Capital under PIA 2021 & NOGICD, held on the second day of the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) Human Capacity Development Conference and Expo at the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, Delta State.

According to her, petroleum engineers were subsequently affected as the downturn deepened, with some made redundant while others were increasingly restricted to maintenance functions as operators moved from expansion to survival.

The official said the industry is now moving in the positive direction, with renewed investment and project development creating an urgent requirement for a new generation of highly specialised professionals.

The shift on her part is particularly significant following President Bola Tinubu’s Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives (Tax Remission) Order, 2026, signed on August 6, providing production tax credits for qualifying deep offshore project developments and is designed to improve the economics of projects reaching Final Investment Decision (FID) within the specified window.

Mrs Eyesan therefore warned that the country could face a new constraint if investment accelerates faster than the development of the technical workforce required to execute complex upstream projects.

The NUPRC boss had previously identified the skills deficit as a major consequence of the prolonged reduction in exploration activity, particularly affecting geologists.

She said renewed investment following the Petroleum Industry Act and business-oriented initiatives of the Tinubu administration was beginning to revive exploration, but warned that human capacity remained a major challenge.

Mrs Eyesan said Nigeria could no longer prepare oil and gas professionals using curricula designed primarily for an earlier generation of petroleum operations.

She identified digitised operations, advanced geoscience, digital twins and digital drilling technologies among the competencies that should now form part of the industry’s core workforce development strategy.

She disclosed that the transformation is significant because modern upstream projects increasingly depend on the ability to integrate subsurface data, real-time field information, automation, modelling and advanced analytics into investment and operational decisions.

For Nigeria, she said, the implication is that training institutions, operators, regulators and academia must move beyond simply replacing workers lost during the downturn.

They must build a workforce capable of operating the digital oilfield of the next investment cycle.

She said, “Training curricula need to evolve,” cautioning that Nigeria was still behind where it needed to be in developing the competencies required by a rapidly changing industry.

Mrs Eyesan also linked human capital development directly to Nigeria’s competitiveness for investment.

Using the analogy that capital behaves like water and flows towards areas of least resistance, she argued that Nigeria’s workforce must become more commercially oriented if the country is to capture greater value from the next wave of oil and gas investment.

She further explained that technical professionals increasingly need to understand the commercial consequences of their decisions, while commercial professionals need sufficient technical understanding to operate effectively within increasingly complex energy projects.

Mrs Eyesan further called for a fundamental change in how Nigeria approaches human capacity development, urging operators, regulators and training institutions to work more closely with universities and other academic institutions to establish a clear pathway for closing the existing skills gap.