Nigeria must drill deeper, revive old fields to arrest oil reserve decline

Nigeria needs to drill more wells in both new and mature basins to replace reserves that are being used up faster than they are found, the head of the country’s main petroleum geoscience body said.

Cecilia Ajayi, president of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists, said the country’s reserves have slipped from about 39 billion barrels to about 37 billion. She argued that this makes sustained exploration a necessity if Africa’s largest crude producer wants to stay competitive.

“We continue to advocate for more exploration so that as we are depleting the current reserves, we are replacing,” Ajayi said.

She spoke on Friday at a high-level panel at the 2026 NAEC Energy Conference in Lagos, organised by the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria. The session, titled “Access to Assets: Empowering Players and Driving Growth,” focused on removing barriers that keep operators from oil, gas, power and mining assets. The wider conference theme was “From Diversification to Value: Scaling Nigeria’s Energy Ecosystem for Growth.”

Ajayi said exploration should not stop at legacy acreage and must reach frontier basins, where she said large potential remains untested.

“The frontier environment needs to be explored,” she said. She urged regulators to offer fiscal and regulatory incentives that reduce the risk of drilling in unproven areas.

She also called for changes to how Nigeria licenses frontier acreage. Investors, she said, should be allowed to do limited technical work on a block before committing full financial obligations, including signature bonuses.

Ghana already works this way, she said, letting frontier investors carry out technical evaluation before paying the bonus. She presented that as a model Nigeria could adopt to draw exploration spending.

Ajayi said technology can also extend the life of existing assets. In her view, new tools let operators drill deeper, redevelop mature fields and recover bypassed oil that was once too expensive to produce.

“So, we should please go ahead, drill deeper, redevelop, bypass oil,” she said. “Let’s take advantage of technology to do what needs to be done.”

Her remarks echo a concern common across the industry: without more exploration and wider use of modern recovery methods, Nigeria risks further erosion of its reserves and a drop in output. The issue is sharper now because access to assets is increasingly seen as the way to bring indigenous operators into the sector and drive growth.

Other panelists included Austin Avuru, executive chairman and founder of AA Holdings Ltd; Wole Ogunsanya, chairman of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria; and Alero Balogun, general manager for corporate communications at Oando Plc. Chike Nwosu, group chief executive officer of HSI Energies Ltd, moderated.