Nigeria’s push to draw fresh investment into its upstream oil and gas sector reached a decisive stage this week as 143 companies advanced to the final commercial bidding round of the Nigeria 2025 Licensing Round, competing for 50 oil and gas blocks across the country’s major basins.

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) said the 37 assets on offer could add about 500 million barrels to the country’s crude reserves and unlock roughly 300,000 barrels per day of new production within three years, building on Nigeria’s existing 37.01 billion barrels of crude and condensate reserves and 215.19 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves.

NUPRC Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan said the licensing round would support the Federal Government’s target of hitting three million barrels a day by 2030, and stressed that winning bidders would be judged on technical competence and delivery capacity, not just the size of their bids. She warned that companies sitting on undeveloped assets for more than three years risked losing them under the Petroleum Industry Act’s drill-or-drop provisions.

Of 286 companies that initially applied, 196 were prequalified and 143 went on to submit a combined 200 bids for the 50 blocks, which include 16 Niger Delta onshore blocks, 18 Niger Delta shallow water blocks, and acreage across the Benin, Anambra and Chad basins and the Benue Trough. President Bola Tinubu has already approved the commencement of a follow-on 2026 licensing round for bidders who miss out this time.

Government ministers Ekperikpe Ekpo and Heineken Lokpobiri both framed the exercise as evidence of a more transparent, investor-friendly licensing regime under the Petroleum Industry Act, with Lokpobiri noting that discretionary allocation of oil blocks was now a thing of the past.

Source: thesun.ng, orientalnewsng.com