The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has announced the official commencement of the Nigeria 2025 Licensing Round, marking another major step in the Federal Government’s drive to expand investment, strengthen transparency, and deepen exploration in the upstream sector.

The Commission also launched the dedicated bid portal: br2025.nuprc.gov.ng.

The announcement and unveiling of the portal were made by the Commission’s Chief Executive, Engr. Gbenga Komolafe on Monday, December 1, 2025, during a press conference at the Commission headquarters in Abuja.

The NUPRC licensing round is a competitive process where the regulatory authority grants companies the rights to explore oil blocks. The licensing round has been designed, as part of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provision, as a transparent process to award oil blocks.

This has replaced the old practice where oil prospecting licence (OPL) or oil mining licence are issued to cronies of the government in power without conducting any transparent process to determine the winners.

Komolafe stated that with Presidential approval from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the NUPRC has now placed 50 oil and gas blocks on offer across onshore, swamp/shallow water, frontier basins, and deepwater terrain.

A breakdown of the blocks includes 15 onshore blocks, 19 shallow water blocks, 15 frontier assets and 1 deepwater block.

The Commission outlined the key objectives of the 2025 Licensing Round, which include boosting Nigeria’s reserves, increasing production capacity, expanding gas utilisation, creating thousands of jobs across the value chain, enhancing indigenous participation, and reinforcing Nigeria’s commitment to transparency in line with EITI principles.

To further de-risk exploration, the NUPRC has undertaken extensive multi-client surveys, reprocessing thousands of kilometres of 2D and 3D seismic data to deliver the highest-quality subsurface imagery available in Africa. This, the Commission noted, sharply reduces uncertainty, lowers entry costs, accelerates time to first oil or gas, and enhances investor confidence.

He said the 2025 Licensing Round is projected to attract about $10 billion in investments, add up to 2 billion barrels to national oil reserves over the next decade, and deliver an estimated 400,000 barrels per day from fully developed assets.

He said, “The Nigeria 2025 licensing round is therefore expected to attract about $10 billion in investments and add up to 2 billion barrels of oil output over the next 10 years with an estimated 400,000 barrels/Day of production volumes when the blocks are fully operational.

“At the commission, we acknowledge that transparency is key to investor confidence. To ensure that the bidding process is credible and seamless, the Commission has rolled out guidelines which are now available on its website. It has adopted a two-stage bidding process for the award of the Blocks, comprising a qualification stage and a bid stage.”

He said winners will emerge at the commercial bid round.

“The qualification stage involves the submission and evaluation of applications by interested parties or consortia in accordance with the Regulation and the Guidelines. Applicants shall provide all information required for this stage. Only applicants who are adjudged qualified and subsequently shortlisted by the Commission shall proceed to the Bid Stage and will be required to execute a Confidentiality Agreement prior to participation.

“At the bid stage, shortlisted applicants or bidders shall submit their Technical and Commercial Bids in accordance with the Regulation, the Guidelines, and any other bidding documents issued by the Commission.

Given our commitment to transparency and alignment with best practices, the bid process will be automated and digital. Winners will emerge at the commercial bid process.”

Effective immediately, the Commission has published the Licensing Round Guidelines, Asset Teasers, Activity Schedule, Maps, and other documents on the Licensing Round Portal for public access. (Daily Trust)