Nigeria licensing round opens with 40 blocks and a call for “the best bids”

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission has opened its 2026 licensing round with 40 blocks onshore and offshore. Announcing it at the commission’s fifth anniversary in Abuja, Commission Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan declared that the wait was over. Under rules adopted for this round, every bidder must disclose its beneficial owners.

Forty oil and gas blocks went on offer on Tuesday when Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan told the fifth anniversary ceremony of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) in Abuja that “the wait is over” and declared the Nigeria 2026 Licensing Round open. The round carries the approval of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who also holds the petroleum resources portfolio.

“We will not rest on our oars,” Eyesan told the audience, warning that “competition for upstream capital is fierce, and it grows fiercer by the day” and reminding the room that “investors have choices”. She promised that “our licensing will be regular and predictable” and that the commission’s focus would be on “what moves the numbers”, starting with the more than 788,000 barrels per day of shut-in production identified across 63 operators. She also wants offshore projects valued at an estimated $30bn to $50bn taken to final investment decision, and domestic gas supply raised “from about two-thirds of the domestic obligation to full delivery”.

Every bidder in the 2026 round will have to disclose its beneficial owners, one of the recommendations NUPRC has adopted from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), whose review of the 2022 to 2024 rounds found them broadly well run while asking for more to be disclosed about how bids were evaluated and who stood behind them. The commission will now publish more detail on its evaluation methodology and results. “In Nigeria, petroleum acreage is won, not given. It is no longer discretionary,” Eyesan said, adding that “clear rules have taken the place of discretion”.

Across the four bid rounds held from 2020 onwards, Eyesan put the investment spent or projected at about $103bn. Last year’s round drew 200 bids from 143 companies, and 31 of them won 37 of the 50 blocks on offer, with interest extending to frontier acreage in the Anambra Basin, the Benue Trough, the Chad Basin and the Benin Basin.

In the coming days the commission will post details of each block, with the requirements bidders must meet, on its website and a dedicated licensing round portal. Eyesan’s invitation went to “qualified Nigerian and international investors”, whom she urged “to come and compete” before telling them, “May the best bids win.”