Winners of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission’s (NUPRC) 2025 Licensing Round have 90 days from receiving their offer letters to meet all award conditions, or they will forfeit the assets, the Commission has said.
Chief executive of NUPRC, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, gave the warning on Tuesday in Abuja, at the opening of the Commercial Bid Conference for the round. She said being named a winner does not automatically mean a Petroleum Prospecting Licence has been granted.
Winners must still provide guarantees, pay a signature bonus and first-year rent, and sign contractual documents before a licence is issued.
She said any bidder that misses the 90-day deadline loses the asset and NUPRC will then offer it to the next-ranked bidder on its reserve list.
Eyesan said the Commission has no interest in acreage sitting idle in the hands of non-performing companies.
“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,” she said.
She put it more bluntly for the winning bidders: an award “is not a trophy to be held,” but an obligation to invest, drill, develop and produce. Her message to them was simple — “drill or drop.”
The exercise drew interest from about 300 companies for 50 available assets. Of these, 196 companies cleared prequalification, and 143 firms went on to submit 200 technical and commercial bids covering 37 assets.
Eyesan said the assets could add roughly 500 million barrels to Nigeria’s crude oil and condensate reserves, which currently stand at 37.01 billion barrels, plus access to gas reserves of 215.19 trillion cubic feet. Fully developed, the fields could add at least 300,000 barrels per day of crude and condensate production within three years — output NUPRC is counting toward Nigeria’s goal of 3 million barrels a day by 2030.
Beyond output, she said the projects would mean higher government revenue, stronger foreign exchange earnings, more jobs, deeper local content, and technology transfer.
Eyesan said NUPRC would judge the round’s success not by how many winners are named, but by how fast those awards turn into real activity — from paperwork to seismic surveys, to drilling, to development, to production.
In return for requiring performance, she said the Commission would offer operators a stable environment: clear guidance, predictable regulatory decisions, and quick intervention when genuine problems arise.
The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) monitored key stages of the process, which Eyesan said was carried out in line with President Bola Tinubu’s directive that it meet international best practices.
She also confirmed that Tinubu has approved a new licensing round for 2026, and encouraged companies that did not win assets this time to stay engaged, as NUPRC plans to keep running rounds regularly to sustain exploration and replenish reserves.
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