Assets, ambition and investment: unlocking Nigeria’s energy opportunity

Securing an energy asset can represent a significant opportunity. Turning that opportunity into a viable, financeable project is another matter entirely.

That challenge is particularly timely in Nigeria, where 31 companies emerged as winners for 37 oil and gas blocks in the country’s latest licensing round, including a number of new entrants. Attention now turns to what comes next.

“A lot of them will be scouting around for funding now,” says Folashade Oluyadi, a partner at leading Nigerian commercial law firm Olaniwun Ajayi LP.

“The question is, how easy is it for them to access this funding?”

That question sits at the heart of Oluyadi’s practice. An oil and gas lawyer with deep financing expertise, she regularly works where energy ambition encounters the realities of capital, advising borrowers and lenders (including commercial banks, development finance institutions and export credit agencies) on corporate and project finance, restructurings, and major oil and gas transactions.

“There are operators who are not able to unlock value because they’re just not able to access the right funding,” she says.

Oluyadi has seen licence holders struggle to finance signature bonuses, while prospective financiers may be prepared to provide funding only once projects reach development stage. Infrastructure, security and regulatory uncertainty can also affect whether projects move forward.

Indeed, immediately before speaking to Africa Legal, Oluyadi had been in a meeting wrestling with the interpretation of a regulation. “We were trying to interpret a regulation and thinking, ‘Why wasn’t this written in a clearer way?’”

Her team would need to engage with the regulator to understand its thinking before advising their client — a small but telling example of why successful energy investment requires more than simply knowing what legislation says.

“Beyond the black letter of the law, there is the commercial,” Oluyadi says, noting she and her Olaniwun Ajayi colleagues serve as business advisors.

And just as lawyers should not consider law in isolation from business realities, many of the challenges facing energy projects cannot be resolved by operators, financiers, government, or regulators acting alone. “There’s value in cross-sector convening,” she says. “Sometimes you find the answers when you see stakeholders coming together to discuss these things.”

Those conversations will be central to the second Olaniwun Ajayi Energy Leadership Forum, held in partnership with Africa Legal in Cape Town on 14 October, alongside African Energy Week, and bringing together sector leaders.

Oluyadi will moderate a panel on “Creating an Investment-Ready Energy Sector | Turning Reform into Results”, exploring how government, industry, investors, and legal advisers can convert reform into measurable outcomes amid competition for global capital. Her panel includes Adesua Dozie, NNPC Limited General Counsel & Company Secretary; Oladapo Filani, Managing Director/CEO of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited; and Dr Ainojie Irune, Executive Director of Oando PLC and Managing Director of Oando Energy Resources.

The question of unlocking Nigeria’s resources extends well beyond newly available oil blocks. Oluyadi sees considerable opportunity in gas, pointing to government efforts to encourage monetisation of Nigeria’s substantial reserves, investment incentives and infrastructure including the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline.

She is also seeing indigenous companies move into gas infrastructure as IOC divestments extend beyond upstream assets.

For Oluyadi, developing those resources forms part of an energy transition that must reflect African circumstances. “We are in Nigeria, or Africa, on our own transition path. We are unlocking everything that we have to ensure that we reach the destination that we want to get to in terms of our own energy story.”

Those changes are not abstract markers of industry development for Oluyadi. They have unfolded during her own career. She entered oil and gas practice when the Petroleum Act remained Nigeria’s principal industry legislation, and has since worked through the introduction of the Petroleum Industry Act, the regulations that followed, and growing indigenous participation.

“If we have the right momentum, I think things can only get better,” she says. “I’m happy to be witnessing the changes, the evolution, and I’m excited for what is coming.”

For more information on the Energy Leadership Forum, themed “Positioning Nigeria for Energy Leadership in Africa: From Reforms to Results”, visit here.