The Chairman of the OPEC Board of Governors for 2025, Adeyemi-Bero, has urged Nigerian oil producers to shift focus from exporting crude oil to prioritising domestic refining and value creation within the country’s energy sector.
Speaking on Wednesday at the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) Pre-Conference Workshop in Lagos, Adeyemi-Bero, who also serves as Chief Executive Officer of First Exploration & Petroleum Development Company, stressed that Nigeria must break away from decades of reliance on crude exports and begin to harness its resources to power local industries.
“We’ve been an oil and gas exporting country for far too long. We produce oil, put it in a tank, and send it abroad,” he said. “Forty or fifty years later, people blame Shell and others, but I don’t. They are businesses seeking feedstock for their industrialisation — if we keep giving it to them, they’ll keep taking it.”
Adeyemi-Bero argued that the time had come for Nigeria to take full ownership of its energy future by building domestic refining capacity and encouraging downstream investment. He emphasised that refining and processing crude oil locally would not only create jobs but also stimulate industrial growth and reduce the country’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
He added that developing the country’s refining and petrochemical infrastructure would also strengthen Nigeria’s economy by ensuring that the value derived from its oil resources stays within the local economy rather than flowing abroad.
