Adeleye Falade Appointed MD of Nigeria LNG as Mshelbila Bows Out
By Naija Enquirer Staff
Philip Mshelbila has successfully completed his tenure as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria LNG (NLNG) after more than four years of transformative leadership.
Following the approval of the NLNG Board of Directors, Engr. Adeleye Falade has been appointed as the new Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Company. He is expected to assume duties in April 2026. Falade will be joining NLNG from Brunei LNG, where he currently serves as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer.
Mshelbila is scheduled to leave NLNG on December 31, 2025, to assume the position of Secretary-General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Doha, Qatar.
A send-off ceremony held in Abuja in his honour was attended by NLNG Directors, executives from shareholder companies, dignitaries from the public sector and Nigeria’s energy industry, members of NLNG management, and representatives of various staff groups.
In his remarks, NLNG’s Deputy Managing Director, Olakunle Osobu, described Mshelbila as a distinguished professional whose expertise spans medicine, environmental health, strategic business leadership, and global gas diplomacy.
Osobu said Mshelbila assumed leadership at a time of unprecedented challenges, including the aftermath of COVID-19, severe flooding that disrupted gas pipelines, vandalism, force majeure declarations by suppliers, and global energy turbulence following the Russia–Ukraine war.
Despite these headwinds, he noted that Mshelbila drove NLNG’s sustainability agenda with resilience and innovation, focusing on business diversification, emissions control, and safety.
“Understanding that NLNG needed multiple supply sources, Mshelbila championed a bold and strategic pivot to expand NLNG’s feed-gas base beyond the shareholder joint-venture supply chain,” Osobu said.
He revealed that under Mshelbila’s leadership, NLNG negotiated and signed long-term Gas Supply Agreements (GSAs) with six third-party gas suppliers in August 2025, committing an estimated 1,290 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscf/d) of feed-gas to the Company—described as a historic and seismic shift in NLNG’s operations.
Also speaking, NLNG’s General Manager, External Relations and Sustainable Development, Sophia Horsfall, praised Mshelbila’s leadership, describing it as selfless, steady, and visionary.
“You led with humility, inspired greatness, and charted a path toward sustainability long before it became fashionable,” Horsfall said.
In his response, Mshelbila expressed deep gratitude to NLNG’s shareholders, Board of Directors, staff, and industry partners for their support throughout his tenure. He affirmed that he would carry NLNG’s culture of innovation and excellence into his new role at GECF.
As Secretary-General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, Mshelbila is expected to strengthen dialogue between gas-producing and gas-consuming nations while promoting natural gas as a sustainable and reliable energy source in the global energy mix.
