NUPRC Opens 2026 Licensing Round With 40 Oil and Gas Blocks

Nigeria has opened its 2026 oil and gas licensing round, putting 40 blocks on offer and telling bidders they must reveal who ultimately owns their companies. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) announced the round as it marked its fifth anniversary.

The commission's Chief Executive, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, launched the round at the anniversary ceremony in Abuja on Tuesday, saying President Bola Tinubu, who is also the Minister of Petroleum Resources, had approved it. The 40 blocks span land, shallow-water and deepwater areas, and Nigerian and international investors can compete for them. Ms Eyesan said "our licensing will be regular and predictable".

Mr Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan said the commission will publish details of the blocks, the qualification requirements and the bidding procedures on its website and licensing portal in the coming days.

The biggest change is the requirement that every bidder disclose its beneficial owners. The regulator said this follows a review by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative of the 2022 to 2024 rounds, which found the process generally professional, transparent and inclusive but pointed out areas for improvement. NUPRC said it accepted the recommendations and will build them into the 2026 round.

Alongside the licensing round, the commission set out plans to restore more than 788,000 barrels per day of shut-in production identified across 63 operators. It also aims to advance offshore projects valued at between $30 billion and $50 billion to final investment decisions, and to raise domestic gas deliveries from about two-thirds of the domestic obligation to full delivery.

The 2025 round offered 50 blocks, and 143 companies submitted about 200 bids for 37 of them, while the other 13 blocks drew no offers. The commission also reported growing interest in frontier basins outside the traditional Niger Delta producing areas. The new round follows the 2020 Marginal Field Bid Round, the 2022/2023 Mini-Bid Round and the 2024 and 2025 licensing rounds.

In August 2025, the regulator published the concession status of 243 blocks and said 220 of them had not been abandoned, but were awaiting concession through future licensing rounds. That figure is more than a year old, and the commission has not said how many of those blocks remain unawarded today.

A licensing round is the formal process through which a regulator offers oil and gas blocks to qualified companies, which submit technical and financial bids and compete on the regulator's published criteria. The next step is the publication of the block details and qualification rules, which will tell investors what they need to bid.

247NewsCheck will follow the round as the block details and deadlines are released.

Source and attribution: This 247NewsCheck report is based on statements by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission and on reports from Premium Times, Vanguard, Offshore Engineer Digital, 21st Century Chronicle and other outlets. The information is attributed to those sources and is not independent reporting by 247NewsCheck.