The federal government has disclosed that Nigeria’s crude oil production would have slumped by about 840,000 barrels per day (bpd) by this year without the sweeping reforms introduced by the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
It argued that a combination of executive orders, fiscal incentives and regulatory reforms by the current administration reversed years of decline and placed the country’s oil industry on a sustainable growth trajectory.
The claims were contained in a three-year review of Nigeria’s energy sector reforms released by the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Energy, which compared the country’s production outlook under ‘reform’ and ‘no-reform’ scenarios.
The government also stated that electricity metering increased from 44 per cent in 2023 to 57.3 per cent in 2025, representing a 13.3 percentage point rise within two years, as reforms in the power sector continue to improve revenue collection, reduce commercial losses and strengthen the financial viability of the electricity market.
According to the report, under a no-reform scenario, Nigeria’s total crude oil and condensate production would have continued its downward trajectory from 1.37 million bpd in 2022 to 1.24 million bpd in 2023, 1.11 million bpd in 2024 and 1.02 million bpd in 2025 before declining further to 930,000 bpd in 2026.
It also projected that oil production would have slumped to 862,000 bpd in 2027, 778,000 bpd in 2028, 660,000 bpd in 2029 and just 579,000 bpd by 2030.
The report attributed the turnaround to eight major executive orders and policy directives accelerated by the president to enable international oil companies to concentrate on deepwater and integrated gas projects while restoring competitiveness to Nigeria’s upstream petroleum sector.
The measures, it said include: The Policy Directives on the Delineation of Regulatory Oversight between the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) issued in 2023 as well as the Presidential Directive 40 (Tax Incentives Order 2024).
The office of the special adviser on energy listed other reforms as: The Notice of Tax Incentives for Deep Offshore Production 2024; the VAT Modification Order 2024; Executive Order 9 on safeguarding federation oil and gas revenues and providing regulatory clarity; the Upstream Cost Efficiency Order 2025; Presidential Directive 41 on Local Content Compliance; and Presidential Directive 42 on Petroleum Sector Cost Reforms 2024.
However, under the reform scenario, the report stated that production recovered steadily from 1.37 million bpd in 2022 to 1.48 million bpd in 2023, 1.54 million bpd in 2024, 1.67 million bpd in 2025 and 1.77 million bpd in 2026, with a target of of 3 million bpd by 2030.
The comparison indicated that by 2030, production under the reform path would exceed the no-reform projection by approximately 840,000 barrels per day, underscoring what the government described as the impact of the policy interventions introduced from May 2023.
Besides the executive orders, the report said the administration deployed targeted security directives to combat crude oil theft and accelerated ministerial consents for major international oil company divestments to indigenous operators, measures it said helped restore onshore production while allowing international companies to focus on deepwater operations.
In the power sector, the federal government said the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI), launched in 2023 to close the country’s estimated 7 million metering gap, had increased the national metering rate from 44 per cent in 2023 to 57.3 per cent in 2025, a 13.3 percentage point improvement.
It added that Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses also declined from 41.67 per cent to 34.9 per cent over the same period, while the government has secured an additional $700 million to support the deployment of about 5 million smart meters nationwide.
According to the report, the reforms in both the petroleum and electricity sectors were designed to restore market confidence, improve operational efficiency, strengthen regulatory certainty and create a commercially viable energy market.
Abati media
