Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan is reshaping Nigeria’s oil regulation

Eight months into the job, NUPRC says permit approvals have fallen from 72 hours to under 24. Nigeria has also met its OPEC quota for three straight months, but the 3 million-barrel target remains far away.

Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan spent nearly 33 years inside Nigeria’s state oil company.

She worked on strategy, commercial agreements and upstream operations. By September 2023, she was Executive Vice President for Upstream at NNPC Limited, a position that put her directly across the table from regulators, international oil companies and indigenous producers.

She left NNPC in November 2024.

Thirteen months later, she returned to the industry from the other side.

President Bola Tinubu nominated Eyesan to lead the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission in December 2025 after the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe. The Senate confirmed her on December 19. She assumed office four days later.

The NUPRC regulates the part of Nigeria’s petroleum industry where oil and gas are found and produced. It oversees licensing rounds, field development plans, production measurement, technical standards and compliance.

Eyesan now regulates many of the companies she spent years negotiating with.

Her first eight months have centred on two numbers: how long it takes an operator to get an approval, and how many barrels Nigeria can put into production.

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Eyes on the goal

Eyesan’s first industry address in January set out three priorities: higher production, faster regulation and safer operations.

Her background shaped the second one.

Before joining the regulator, she had spent years on the operator side of the business. As NNPC’s upstream executive, she was involved in discussions over divested assets, joint ventures, gas projects and investment decisions.

NNPC records show her participating in the settlement around ExxonMobil’s proposed divestment to Seplat and in the conversion of Chevron joint-venture assets to Petroleum Industry Act terms.

At NUPRC, she has focused heavily on approval time.

The commission says some permits that previously took about 72 hours can now be approved in less than 24 hours. Eyesan has also introduced a 90-day programme for projects considered close enough to development to be accelerated through the regulatory process.

NUPRC has begun digitising more of its internal processes and created a monthly forum between the regulator and upstream operators.

These are commission-reported improvements. The more important measure is whether operators convert faster approvals into wells, projects and production.

Nigeria is producing more oil than when she arrived

The production numbers have improved.

NUPRC said Nigeria produced an average of 1.505 million barrels of crude oil a day in July 2026. Condensate added another 170,000 barrels a day, taking combined oil and condensate output to about 1.67 million barrels daily.

July was the third consecutive month in which crude production met or exceeded Nigeria’s OPEC quota of 1.5 million barrels a day.

The improvement is also showing up in the wider economy. Nigeria’s oil production averaged 1.72 million barrels a day in the second quarter, up from 1.55 million in the previous quarter, according to data cited by Reuters from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Eyesan cannot claim those barrels as the product of eight months of regulation. Oil projects take years, production depends on operators, and output is affected by security, infrastructure and existing investments.

Her job is to keep the increase going.

The government wants production at 2 million barrels a day by 2027 and 3 million by 2030. Eyesan adopted those targets in her January agenda.

On the crude measure used for Nigeria’s OPEC quota, July production was still only about half the 2030 target.

Her first licensing round produced 200 bids

Eyesan also inherited the 2025 oil licensing round. The commercial bidding process concluded in July.

NUPRC said 143 companies submitted 200 bids for 37 oil and gas blocks. The government had offered 50 blocks, but 13 received no bids. Thirty-one companies eventually emerged as winners across the 37 blocks that attracted interest.

The winners do not automatically own producing assets.

They still have to meet payment and approval requirements, including signature bonuses and ministerial approval. NUPRC has also told successful bidders to develop the acreage or risk losing it under the Petroleum Industry Act’s drill-or-drop provisions.

The commission says the acreage could add about 300,000 barrels a day over three years and roughly 500 million barrels to Nigeria’s oil and condensate reserves. Those are regulatory projections, not production already secured.

Eyesan had said in June that another licensing round would begin by the third quarter of 2026.

Running consecutive rounds only works if investors believe winning acreage can be turned into producing assets without years of delay.

ExxonMobil has put $1 billion behind an old deepwater asset

One investment announced during Eyesan’s tenure came from ExxonMobil.

In July, ExxonMobil’s Nigerian affiliate and its partners committed $1 billion to the Usan infill project in OML 138. NUPRC says the project could add about 40,000 barrels a day.

The company had not conducted a drilling operation in the asset since 2016.

NUPRC is looking beyond one project.

The commission says 22 offshore developments expected between 2026 and 2030 could attract between $30 billion and $50 billion in investment. It also says more than $57 billion worth of field development plans have been approved since 2024.

Most of that $57 billion predates Eyesan’s appointment, so it cannot be presented as capital she personally unlocked.

Her responsibility is to keep those approved projects moving towards final investment decisions and production.

She already knows why operators hesitate

Eyesan was making many of the same arguments before becoming regulator.

At an industry conference in February 2024, while running NNPC’s upstream business, she said production growth, reserve growth and asset integrity were the basic measures of whether an upstream asset was succeeding. She also argued that some assets transferred to independent producers had subsequently suffered production declines.

Three months later, she identified funding as one of the main constraints on Nigeria’s upstream sector and argued that the country needed infrastructure and investment conditions that made projects easier to finance.

Those problems are now partly hers to solve.

Nigeria still has ageing infrastructure, security risks, projects waiting for capital and international oil companies reshaping their portfolios. The regulator can shorten approval periods. It cannot finance an operator or repair every pipeline.

Eyesan also has an enforcement role that is different from her old job.

NNPC was trying to maximise the value of its own interests and partnerships. NUPRC has to regulate the entire market, including NNPC and companies competing with it.

Her former position gives her direct knowledge of how operators make investment decisions. It also means her performance will have to be judged on whether the regulator applies its rules consistently across those operators.

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