Nigeria awards 37 oil blocks as cut fees lure frontier bids
Nigeria awarded 37 oil and gas blocks to 31 companies after drastically reducing entry costs, signaling a successful pivot to attract capital into its underexplored frontier basins.
Thirty-one companies secured 37 oil and gas blocks in Nigeria’s 2025 Licensing Round following a competitive bid in Abuja on July 21, 2026. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) confirmed that 13 of the 50 offered blocks failed to attract bids.
The strong participation was driven by a dramatic reduction in entry costs. Signature bonuses were slashed to between $3 million and $7 million, down from $10 million in 2024 and roughly $200 million in prior years. The reduced fees, which carry presidential approval, appear to have successfully lowered the financial barrier for explorers willing to take on early-stage geological risk.
This pricing strategy notably unlocked capital for regions previously considered marginal. The NUPRC stated this was the first time in the country's energy history that frontier basins attracted such investor interest. Of the 37 awarded blocks, 16 were in the Niger Delta Onshore and 18 in Niger Delta Shallow Water. A single Deep Offshore block was awarded. Crucially, the remaining blocks were spread across high-risk frontier territories: three in the Benin Basin Onshore, four in the Anambra Basin Onshore, four in the Chad Basin Onshore, and four in the Benue Trough.
The winning bidders included a broad mix of local firms, such as SSonic Petroleum Limited, Asharami, Blueridge E&P, Blackrock Holdings Limited, and Stardeep Petroleum. Others on the list included Saratoga, Volante, Italia, and Eyre Energy Limited.
NUPRC Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan moved quickly to tie the awards to capital deployment. He urged the successful bidders to pay their signature bonuses without delay and commence immediate development of the assets. Eyesan explicitly warned that companies failing to develop their blocks risk losing them under the Commission’s “drill or drop” provision.
Final awards remain contingent on these bonus payments and subsequent approval by the Minister of Petroleum Resources, operating under the framework of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021. The commercial bid conference was monitored by the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Federal Ministry of Finance, and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. The 2025 round also marked the regulator's introduction of a digital bid portal, part of a broader effort to streamline upstream investment processes.
