Landmark FID underscores renewed global investor confidence in Nigeria

President Bola Tinubu, yesterday, welcomed Shell’s $2 billion Final Investment Decision (FID) on a new gas project in the HI shallow offshore field (OML 144), describing it as another decisive vote of confidence in Nigeria’s reform agenda.
 
The Non-Associated Gas (NAG) development will deliver around 350 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscf/d) from 2028, nearly one-third of the feed gas needed for Nigeria LNG Limited’s Train 7 project.
 
Shell’s FID brings total upstream investment commitments to more than $8 billion since President Tinubu assumed office in 2023, marking the third major oil and gas FID in just 18 months, after the Ubeta gas and Bonga North deepwater projects.
 
Together, the Ubeta and HI gas fields are expected to supply up to 15 per cent of NLNG’s total feedstock requirements (Trains 1-7). Since 2024, the Tinubu administration has issued targeted presidential directives, coordinated by the Office of the Special Adviser on Energy, that introduced unprecedented fiscal incentives, regulatory clarity, streamlined contracting, and shorter approval cycles. 
 
The three landmark FIDs, Ubeta, HI, and Bonga North, are “blueprint projects” strategically unlocked to drive the implementation of the presidential directives.
 
Specifically, the HI gas field, first discovered in 1985, is being developed under Presidential Directive 40, which created a globally competitive fiscal framework for onshore and shallow offshore gas projects.
 
Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Olu Arowolo Verheijen, said the Ubeta and HI gas projects had secured the critical supply needed to make NLNG Train 7 “not just possible, but transformative.”

 Shell’s Upstream President, Peter Costello, said the company remains committed to Nigeria’s energy sector.