The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has clarified that Nigeria’s local content policy was not designed to restrict the scope of operations of foreign oil companies in the country’s oil and gas sector.
Lokpobiri made the clarification at the pre-conference opening of the 2026 Nigeria International Energy Summit held in Abuja, with the theme, “Energy for Peace and Prosperity: Securing Our Shared Future.”
He said Nigeria’s petroleum industry is large enough to accommodate both indigenous and international firms, stressing that the focus of government policy is to strengthen local capacity and ensure indigenous companies are able to compete effectively with foreign Engineering, Procurement and Construction firms.
According to the minister, the Nigerian Content Act has provided financing support to indigenous companies to boost their competitiveness, but he admitted that its implementation has not always produced the desired outcomes.
“When I assumed office as Minister, one of the first major issues I encountered concerned the implementation of local content. As someone with an EPC background, I was repeatedly confronted with questions about why project costs in Nigeria were higher than in other countries, even when those projects were executed locally,” he said.
He described the situation as unacceptable, adding, “A country should not have higher project costs than foreign jurisdictions. Upon careful review, we discovered that the challenge stemmed largely from the misapplication of the local content policy.”
Lokpobiri explained that while indigenous firms currently lack the capacity to independently execute complex offshore EPC projects, collaboration rather than exclusion remains the most viable solution.
“Nigeria is large enough for both EPC companies and indigenous firms to collaborate. Offshore EPC projects still largely fall within the expertise of international companies, and this has sometimes created monopolistic conditions that limit competition in pricing,” he said.
To address the challenges, he disclosed that the Governing Council on Local Content has convened stakeholders across the industry to develop practical solutions through engagements held alongside major industry events in Abuja.
“These engagements focused on making project costs globally competitive by encouraging cooperation among EPC companies, petroleum operators and strong indigenous firms,” Lokpobiri said, adding that offshore operations present vast opportunities for both local and foreign players.
He also admitted that previous implementation of local content policies often favoured intermediaries rather than genuine capacity development, a situation the government is now working to correct to ensure meaningful growth and competitiveness within the sector.
