Nigeria's energy reform push has taken another significant stride forward. The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Energy, Olu Verheijen, has held high-level talks with senior executives at TotalEnergies to expand investment in Nigeria's oil and gas sector. The TotalEnergies delegation was led by Nicolas Terraz, President of Exploration and Production, alongside Matthieu Bouyer, Managing Director and Country Chair of TotalEnergies Nigeria, and other members of the company's executive team.
According to a statement by EnergyReformsNG, discussions centred on unlocking the next wave of investments across Nigeria's oil and gas landscape, with a focus on driving production growth, enhancing energy security, and positioning the country as an attractive destination for long-term capital.
The meeting was not an isolated diplomatic courtesy call it is part of a deliberate and intensifying courtship between Abuja and major international oil companies. Nicolas Terraz had earlier met with the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, in what was described as a constructive and forward-looking engagement, focused on TotalEnergies' medium-term capital deployment strategy and Nigeria's evolving regulatory and fiscal landscape. Lokpobiri said after that meeting: "Our discussions were constructive and forward-looking, reflecting the company's sustained confidence in Nigeria and its long-term potential."
TotalEnergies' track record in Nigeria lends credibility to the current conversations. The French energy giant has already committed $550 million to develop a gas processing facility in partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, as part of a broader wave of investment that has seen Nigeria catalyse over $17 billion in foreign direct investment into its oil and gas industry since the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act.
That reform dividend is now shaping the ambition behind these talks. Nigeria's broader goal is to unlock $30 billion in oil and $5 billion in gas investments by 2029, with production targets set well above two million barrels per day. This threshold will require consistent capital commitments from established operators like TotalEnergies.
The engagement underscores a shared commitment between government and industry stakeholders to create enabling conditions for investment, support large-scale energy projects, and deliver sustained economic value for Nigerians.
For TotalEnergies, Nigeria remains one of its most strategically consequential upstream markets on the African continent. For Nigeria, every such conversation is a building block toward reversing years of underinvestment and proving that the reform era is producing results that the market can take seriously.
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