With a career spanning process operations, procurement and contracts, technical logistics, integrated planning and regulatory coordination, David Chinalu Anaba has developed a cross-functional view of how oil and gas operations actually hold together. Supply chain is his forte, but his larger argument is about the industry itself: resilient energy operations are built by integrating engineering, commercial discipline, logistics, data and regulatory execution.

David Chinalu Anaba’s professional story is best understood not as a progression through isolated job titles, but as a journey across the operating architecture of the oil and gas industry. Trained as a mechanical engineer, he has worked close to production as a process technologist, moved into materials procurement and contract engineering, expanded into technical logistics and integrated operations planning, and now works in coordination with partners, authorities and regulators at TotalEnergies EP Nigeria. The common thread is a practical interest in how complex energy operations are designed, supplied, coordinated and sustained.

That breadth has shaped a perspective that is wider than procurement alone. Anaba’s forte is supply chain, but he approaches it as an engineer: as a system of interdependent decisions connecting production requirements, materials, contractors, marine and aviation resources, cost, safety, compliance and operational continuity. In an offshore environment, a purchasing decision is rarely just a purchasing decision. A late material can affect maintenance; a poorly structured contract can weaken service delivery; a vessel conflict can disrupt an offshore campaign; and an unresolved regulatory obligation can become an operational constraint. Resilience therefore depends on seeing the whole system rather than optimizing one transaction in isolation.

“A resilient oil and gas operation isn’t built during a crisis,” Anaba says. “It is built in the ordinary decisions—how you operate, how you plan materials, how you write contracts, how you allocate logistics resources, how you manage interfaces and how visible you make the process.” This is the principle that connects the different phases of his career. His experience has repeatedly placed him at interfaces where technical requirements must be translated into commercial, logistical or organizational action.

His early years in process operations provided an important foundation. Working as a process technologist in an oil and gas production environment exposed him directly to the realities behind corporate metrics: equipment availability, process stability, production constraints, safety requirements and the operational consequences of delay. That experience matters because it gave him a user’s view of the supply chain before he became part of the supply chain itself. Materials, services and contracts were not abstractions; they were inputs into a live production system.

When Anaba moved into procurement, he carried that operational perspective with him. As a buyer, he worked on materials management and replenishment planning for joint-venture operations across short-, medium- and long-term horizons, tracking purchase requisitions and orders and expediting deliveries against site requirements. The work reinforced a lesson that would recur throughout his career: procurement performance should ultimately be measured by the operational value it enables, not simply by the completion of a purchasing transaction.

His subsequent work as a contract engineer deepened the commercial side of that understanding. He developed scopes of work, supported contract execution in line with company rules and specifications, and participated in service-quality and contractor-performance processes. Contracts, in this view, are more than instruments for obtaining services. They allocate risk, define accountability, establish performance expectations and influence how quickly an organization and its suppliers can respond when operating conditions change. “The future of the industry gets decided one contract at a time,” Anaba says—not because contracts alone determine the future, but because strategy becomes real through the commitments companies make to technologies, suppliers, capabilities and operating models.

Technical Logistics widened the frame again. As a Methods Engineer, Anaba worked across integrated operations planning, statistical key figures, cost allocation, company management-system documentation, contractor follow-up and the planning of shared logistics resources. His work included developing structured approaches to marine and vessel planning across multiple offshore installations and campaigns. In an environment where offshore facilities, rigs and other activities may compete for finite logistics resources, the planning challenge is inherently systemic: an apparently efficient decision for one activity can create delay, cost or conflict elsewhere.

This systems perspective is also evident in his interest in digitization. Anaba has worked on turning fragmented planning and administrative processes into more visible, repeatable workflows. His approach is deliberately process-led. Digital tools are valuable, he argues, when they make dependencies clearer, strengthen traceability, reduce reliance on individual memory and allow decision-makers to see emerging conflicts earlier. Technology should strengthen a sound operating process, not disguise a weak one beneath a new interface.

The same philosophy informs his interest in artificial intelligence and advanced analytics. Complex energy operations generate more variables than any planner can continuously hold in view: production schedules, equipment condition, material lead times, contractor performance, vessel availability, cost exposure, logistics constraints and regulatory commitments. AI can help identify patterns, exceptions and emerging risks earlier, while human professionals retain the context, judgement and accountability required to act on them. For Anaba, the opportunity is not to remove people from the decision loop, but to give them a better decision environment.

His transition into Partners, Authorities and Regulatory Relations adds another dimension to that operating model. Regulatory coordination can appear distant from supply chain, yet it relies on many of the same disciplines: anticipating requirements, integrating inputs from multiple technical entities, maintaining traceable documentation, managing deadlines and interfaces, and following commitments through to closure. In a highly regulated industry, operational resilience includes the ability to maintain regulatory confidence and prevent compliance gaps from interrupting otherwise sound technical plans.

Taken together, these experiences position Anaba principally as an oil and gas professional with a supply-chain forte. His value lies in being able to move across the boundaries that often separate engineering, commercial activity, logistics planning and governance. That cross-functional perspective is increasingly important as the energy industry confronts simultaneous pressures around cost, reliability, localization, digital transformation, emissions performance and regulatory scrutiny. None of those challenges can be solved by a single function acting alone.

Anaba has also begun extending this professional perspective beyond the boundaries of his corporate roles. Through That Supply Thing, his supply-chain podcast and media platform, he discusses the movement of goods, services, capital and ideas through business and industry, translating technical and commercial subjects for a wider audience. The platform reflects his conviction that supply chain deserves to be discussed not merely as a back-office function, but as a force shaping business competitiveness, industrial development and everyday economic life.

That knowledge-sharing effort is reinforced by his book, Oil & Gas Supply Chain: Explained for Non-Engineers. The project is designed to make the structure and language of the oil and gas supply chain more accessible to readers who may work around the industry without having an engineering or specialist supply-chain background. It draws on the same multidisciplinary view that has shaped his career: understanding oil and gas requires understanding how technical operations, procurement, contracts, logistics, cost and stakeholder obligations connect. In that sense, the book is not separate from his professional work; it is an effort to codify and communicate knowledge accumulated across different parts of the value chain.

This emphasis on accessibility has a wider talent-development implication. Modern oil and gas operations need professionals who can work across traditional functional boundaries—people capable of understanding a technical requirement, interpreting its commercial implications, coordinating logistics, using data intelligently and communicating with contractors, management and regulators. Anaba’s own trajectory illustrates that multidisciplinary model. His argument is that the industry becomes more resilient when professionals understand not only their individual function, but also the system their function serves.

The Nigerian and wider emerging-market context makes that argument especially relevant. Energy operations in such environments can face infrastructure constraints, currency volatility, import dependencies, long or uncertain lead times and complex stakeholder interfaces. These conditions magnify the cost of fragmented planning. Better visibility, stronger contracting, scenario-based planning, supplier development, disciplined governance and intelligent use of digital tools are therefore not optional refinements; they can become important sources of operational resilience and competitiveness.

For all his interest in technology and systems, Anaba ultimately returns to a human principle: resilience is a capability built before it is needed. It grows through accurate information, clearer scopes, disciplined contracting, coordinated planning, visible accountabilities and professionals willing to understand the consequences of decisions beyond their immediate desks. His career across operations, procurement, contracts, logistics and regulatory coordination has given him multiple vantage points on the same industry. The conclusion he draws from them is straightforward: oil and gas resilience is not owned by one department. It is engineered across the value chain