Environmental compliance in Nigeria’s petroleum industry has traditionally relied on periodic inspections, operator self-reporting and post-incident regulatory enforcement despite the increasing complexity of environmental risks. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) presents an opportunity to transform this approach through real-time environmental monitoring, predictive risk detection and measurement-based regulatory compliance. This paper adopted a doctrinal research methodology to examine whether Nigeria’s petroleum regulatory framework is legally equipped to integrate AI into environmental compliance monitoring (ECM). It analysed primary and secondary sources of law and its findings revealed that although the extant legal and regulatory regimes create room for AI-assisted monitoring, none of them expressly recognises AI as a regulatory tool, and Nigeria has no legal framework governing the reliability, evidential status or accountability of AI-generated compliance data. It concluded that the major regulatory task is no longer whether AI can monitor environmental compliance but whether the law can keep pace with the effect of automated environmental oversight. The paper recommended statutory recognition of AI-assisted monitoring together with validation standards for AI-generated compliance data. This paper contributes to knowledge by proposing a model for integrating AI into petroleum sector environmental governance in Nigeria.
Keywords: 2021, Artificial Intelligence, Nigerian Petroleum Industry Act, environmental compliance
