For decades, the path into Nigeria’s oil and gas industry seemed relatively easy to understand, even if getting through the door was anything but easy.
For many graduates, a career in the sector meant working for one of the large international oil companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies or Eni, or joining the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
That picture is changing.
Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is going through one of its most significant structural shifts in decades. The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), signed into law in 2021, introduced a new governance and regulatory framework for the sector. One of its most visible outcomes was the transformation of the old NNPC into Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, which began operating as a fully commercial entity in July 2022.
But regulation is only one part of the story. At the same time, several international oil companies have been reshaping their Nigerian portfolios, particularly by selling mature onshore and shallow-water assets to Nigerian-owned or Nigerian-led companies.
The scale of that transition is significant.
In August 2024, Oando completed the acquisition of Eni’s Nigerian Agip Oil Company for a total consideration of $783 million. In December of the same year, Seplat Energy completed its acquisition of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited from ExxonMobil. Then, in March 2025, Shell completed the sale of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria to Renaissance Africa Energy.
These were not simply financial transactions. Collectively, they changed who owns, manages and develops a substantial portion of Nigeria’s petroleum assets.
By June 2025, Reuters reported, based on oil-regulator data, that local companies had grown from accounting for roughly 40 per cent of Nigeria’s oil production before the major divestments to more than half of national production.
That is a profound shift. Yet there is an important question underneath it: what does this new ownership structure mean for the Nigerian graduate looking for a career in energy?
The answer is more complicated than simply saying that there are now more jobs.
On paper, a more diversified industry should create more opportunities. Nigeria today has NNPC Limited, established indigenous exploration and production companies, recently expanded operators such as Seplat and Oando, Renaissance, oilfield-service companies and a growing range of businesses working across gas, infrastructure, engineering, logistics, technology and other parts of the energy value chain.
However, more companies do not automatically mean more graduate vacancies.
When one company acquires an existing producing asset, for example, it does not necessarily rebuild the entire workforce from scratch. Existing operations, employees and contractor relationships may continue while structures are consolidated. Many independent operators also have strong incentives to remain lean, particularly in an industry where operating costs, ageing infrastructure, security and financing remain major concerns.
There is another important difference. A considerable amount of the work required to keep the industry running does not necessarily sit directly on an operator’s payroll. Engineering support, maintenance, fabrication, logistics, specialist technical services, technology implementation and project execution can involve contractors and specialist service companies.
For a young person looking from the outside, this makes the employment market much harder to read.
Twenty years ago, someone interested in an oil and gas career might have watched a relatively small group of companies for graduate recruitment announcements. Today, that same person may need to understand an entire ecosystem.
The opportunity may be with an operator. It may also be with an engineering company, a technology provider, an EPC contractor, a marine-services company, a gas-processing business, a supply-chain company or one of the many specialist firms supporting large energy projects.
At the same time, the skills required are changing.
The industry will always need petroleum engineers, geoscientists and other traditional technical professionals, but modern energy businesses require a much broader mix of capabilities. Project management, process engineering, health and safety, finance, commercial analysis, procurement, supply chain, data science, automation and digital technology are increasingly relevant alongside conventional engineering disciplines.
TotalEnergies, for example, lists early-career opportunities across areas including geosciences, process engineering, data science, business development, project management, finance, purchasing and market analysis. This gives some indication of how much broader an energy career has become.
The encouraging news is that structured entry routes have not disappeared.
NNPC Limited maintains a graduate recruitment pathway and describes its young-professional development programme as combining technical and business training, mentoring and competency development. Seplat Energy also operates a Graduate Trainee Programme designed to develop young graduates before integrating them into the business. Renaissance, one of the newest major names in the Nigerian industry, now advertises a two-year graduate programme built around structured rotations and exposure to engineering, geoscience and commercial functions. Shell continues to provide student industrial-training opportunities in Nigeria across engineering, geoscience, information technology, sciences, social sciences and commercial disciplines.
These programmes matter because the industry cannot rely solely on recruiting people who are already experienced.
Oil and gas is a knowledge-intensive business. Engineers, geoscientists, project managers, commercial specialists and operations professionals become valuable partly through years of exposure to real assets, projects and experienced colleagues. If companies recruit only people who can “hit the ground running”, the industry eventually runs into a pipeline problem: everyone wants experienced talent, but too few organisations are investing in creating it.
That is why internships, apprenticeships, graduate development programmes and partnerships with universities and technical institutions need to be seen as more than corporate social responsibility. They are part of the industry’s long-term talent infrastructure.
There is also an employer-brand problem that deserves more attention.
For generations of Nigerian graduates, companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Eni were more than oil companies. They were highly visible career brands. Students encountered their scholarships, recruitment programmes, university activities and success stories long before they submitted a job application.
As ownership shifts towards Nigerian companies, the employment proposition has to shift with it.
Seplat, Oando, Renaissance and other indigenous energy businesses may now control assets and responsibilities once associated with international majors, but attracting the next generation will require more than owning those assets. Young Nigerians need to understand what careers inside these businesses actually look like, how they can enter, what skills they need and how far they can progress.
That means employer branding can no longer be an afterthought.
An engineering student in Enugu, a data-science graduate in Lagos or a young supply-chain professional in Port Harcourt should be able to imagine building a world-class career at a Nigerian energy company with the same confidence that an earlier generation imagined a career at Shell or ExxonMobil.
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This is where the conversation about employment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry needs to change.
The question is no longer simply, “Are there still jobs in oil and gas?”
There are opportunities, but they are becoming more dispersed, specialised and sometimes less visible. The real questions are whether graduates know where to look for them, whether universities and training institutions are preparing people with the skills employers now need, and whether energy companies are creating credible entry points through which inexperienced but capable young people can develop.
Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is becoming more Nigerian in ownership. The next step should be ensuring that it also becomes more deliberate about developing Nigerian talent.
If that does not happen, the country could arrive at an uncomfortable contradiction: a stronger generation of indigenous energy companies controlling more of the nation’s petroleum assets, but a generation of young Nigerians who cannot see where they fit into the industry.
The future of the sector will therefore depend not only on who owns the assets beneath the ground, but also on how effectively the industry develops the people who will manage them above it.
Shehu Zubairu is the Associate Partner at Human Capital Partners, LagosJoin BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
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