NNPC CEO claims Nigeria can increase output by 100,000 but the data tells a different story
Bayo Ojulari, Group CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), was in Houston on Monday for CERAWeek, the annual gathering where the global oil industry sets its tone.
Standing before Reuters on the conference sidelines, he said Nigeria could add 100,000 barrels per day to its output within months. “We are not like Saudi Arabia,” he said. “But we can contribute.“
It is a modest claim by Nigerian oil standards and expectations. His modesty is precisely what makes the claim interesting and the production data beneath it worth examining carefully.
Nigeria recorded a combined crude output shortfall of about 16.6 million barrels in the first two months of 2026. Output fell to 1.31 million barrels per day in February (according to OPEC), a sharp drop from 1.459 million bpd in January. Both figures are below Nigeria’s OPEC quota of 1.5 million bpd.
The Tinubu administration set a target of 2 million bpd for 2025. Nigeria averaged roughly 1.5 million barrels per day, about half a million barrels short. The government’s response was to raise the target to 2.5 million bpd.
Nigeria has not sustained 2 million bpd in a decade. For the 2026 budget, the government quietly lowered its planning figure to 1.8 million bpd, a rare admission that even it no longer believes the headline numbers.
Ojulari is not a career bureaucrat. He is a former Managing Director of Shell Nigeria’s exploration arm and, most recently, Chief Operating Officer at Renaissance Africa Energy, which took over Shell’s onshore subsidiary in Nigeria. He has operated in the Niger Delta. He knows where the oil is being lost.
At the conference, he said NNPC completed a full business portfolio review in 2025 and is now implementing changes, with a specific focus on project execution, delivering on time and within budget.
The recent resolution of the OPL 245 dispute could also unlock an additional 150,000 bpd from one of Nigeria’s most significant deepwater assets — a genuine upside the portfolio review alone cannot deliver.
Nigeria loses an estimated 400,000 barrels per day to oil theft and pipeline vandalism, more than $10 billion annually. Every barrel that fails to materialise is a gap in the 2026 budget that gets filled by borrowing or by printing naira. Nigerians know exactly what that means for market prices.
Ojulari has the right CV to lead NNPC, and he may have the right ideas to improve the oil economy. He has a system that briefly proved it can exceed quota. What he needs, and what the Nigerian government must provide for the NNPC, is a solution to the thieves on the pipelines.
Additional reporting by Esther Emeka
