Favour Ishember, Abuja
Nigeria has concluded the technical and commercial bidding phase of its 2025 Licensing Round, with 143 companies submitting 200 bids for 37 oil and gas assets, as the Federal Government pushes to add 500 million barrels to national reserves and lift output toward 3 million barrels per day by 2030.
Speaking in her opening remarks, at the Commercial Bid Conference held in Abuja, the Commission Chief Executive, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Mrs Eyesan said the process began eight months ago on a direct mandate from President Tinubu to “open new opportunities and further integrate Nigeria with the global community” through transparent, fair and internationally aligned procedures.
The licensing round started with interest from about 300 companies across 50 available assets. After prequalification, 196 applicants qualified to bid. By the submission deadline, 143 companies had filed bids covering 37 assets.
The CEE, who took over from Engineer Gbenga Komolafe, said the Commission had kept to the published schedule and delivered both technical and commercial bid openings on July 21, 2026, as promised.
Transparency, she said, was built into every stage. The Nigeria 2025 Licensing Round Guidelines spelled out rules, requirements and evaluation criteria, and were further clarified through the Licensing Round Portal, a Pre-Bid Conference, webinars and dedicated enquiry channels.
To reinforce public trust, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, observed the evaluation and bid-opening procedures.
The technical evaluation assessed bidder competence, experience, organizational and operational capacity, credibility of work programs, resource commitment, and ability to deliver on time.
Commercial evaluation will now weigh signature bonus, work programme commitment and work programme performance security. The winner for each asset will be the bidder with the highest weighted aggregate score, not simply the highest upfront payment.
According to her, the Commission projected that assets on offer could add about 500 million barrels to Nigeria’s reserves. Current national reserves stand at 37.01 billion barrels of crude oil and condensate, and 215.19 trillion cubic feet of gas.
If successfully developed, the new blocks are expected to contribute a minimum of 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil and condensate over the next three years, a critical step toward the government’s 3 million bpd target for 2030, she added.
Beyond volumes, the CEE said the round was designed to deliver “efficient barrels” that generate government revenue, foreign exchange, infrastructure use, jobs for indigenous service companies, technology transfer and broader economic growth. The government, he added, will support production from both small and large fields to broaden participation.
Successful bidders were put on notice: an award is “not a trophy to be held. It is an obligation to invest, drill, develop and produce.”
“Drill or drop. Work programmes must be implemented, financial commitments must be honoured and agreed milestones must be achieved,” she said.
She clarified that Monday’s announcement does not equal a final grant of a Petroleum Prospecting Licence. Winners have 90 days from receiving their offer letter to meet post-bid conditions, including guarantees, payment of signature bonus and first-year rent, and execution of contracts. Failure means the asset goes to reserve bidders in order of ranking.
“The Government is not seeking speculative holders of acreage; it is seeking partners with the capacity, discipline and commitment to deliver measurable production and economic value,” he stated.
The Commission pledged to support credible operators with clear guidance, predictable regulatory decisions and timely intervention where genuine obstacles arise.
For companies that did not win, the Commission urged them to stay engaged, noting that opportunities exist beyond these assets and that periodic licensing rounds will continue.
In a major signal to investors, the CEE announced that President Tinubu has approved the commencement of the 2026 bid round. “We will be back with another basket of opportunities soon. So, watch out,” she said.
The conference ran under the theme “Expanding Opportunities: Right Play, Right Place, Right Time.”
“The true measure of the success of this Licensing Round will not be the number of winning bidders announced today,” the CEE concluded. “It will be the speed with which the awards move from paper to seismic acquisition, from seismic to drilling, from drilling to development and, ultimately, from development to production.”
The bidding was attended by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, represented at the event alongside the Ministers of State for Petroleum Resources for Oil and Gas, the Special Adviser to the President on Oil and Gas, and other key stakeholders.
