Nigeria should target 5m barrels a day by 2030

Kola Karim has called for Nigeria to set a 2030 goal of five million barrels a day, a target that would more than double today’s production and reset the country’s place in OPEC. The Shoreline Group chairman said the barrels exist in under-invested brownfields, stalled deepwater projects and associated gas-oil developments that have languished through theft, insecurity and contract uncertainty.

Output has swung between 1.4 and 1.8 million barrels a day this year as security operations curbed theft in some corridors while outages persisted elsewhere. The upstream regulator reported 1.71mb/d in July and OPEC secondary sources showed around 1.39–1.51mb/d in September, well short of Abuja’s medium-term aspirations. Ministers have talked up a climb toward 2–3mb/d, but Karim’s 5mb/d pitch lifts the ceiling and the level of policy effort required.

His blueprint leans on three levers. First, industrial-scale security: permanent aerial and maritime surveillance across hot spots, with transparent metrics on pipeline uptime and losses. Second, investable contracts: fiscal clarity on deepwater and marginal assets, and standardised terms that shorten cycle times for indigenous operators and IOCs. Third, capital access: pre-financing and reserve-based lending to reactivate shut-in wells, debottleneck flow stations and restore evacuated pipelines, alongside risk-sharing for gas processing that unlocks liquids streams. Shoreline has previously used trader-backed financing to lift output onshore; Karim argues the model can scale with better line of sight to evacuation.

The timing matters for macro policy. Higher sustainable production would ease dollar shortages, lift federally shared revenues and cut the country’s risk premium with lenders. It would also test how Nigeria balances OPEC+ constraints with domestic goals. Analysts say progress hinges on durable pipeline integrity—without it, fresh capex risks chasing barrels that cannot reach terminals.

A production step-up would intersect with refining changes. New domestic capacity, led by private projects, is rewiring crude and product flows. Stable upstream volumes would reduce swap-style product imports and underpin longer-term plans in petrochemicals and gas-to-power. But none of that, Karim says, lands without credible security and contract delivery that attract multi-year capital back into the delta and offshore.

Nigeria has set big targets before and missed them. Karim’s counter is operational: measure leaks, publish uptime, reward performance, and let capital follow improved reliability. If Abuja can lock in pipeline integrity and clear fiscal signals, he argues, the resource base can support a path to 5mb/d—even if quotas and market conditions dictate how quickly those barrels hit the tape.