Nigeria’s upstream oil regulator plans to hold licensing rounds every year, and possibly twice a year, as the OPEC member races to reverse a production slump that has kept output below 2 million barrels a day for 12 consecutive years, according to the chief executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, in an interview with S&P Global Platts.
Eyesan, appointed last year in a surprise reshuffle of Nigeria’s two oil regulators and only the second executive to lead NUPRC, is tasked with growing national output to 3 million barrels a day by 2030 — a target that has eluded successive administrations as maturing fields, pipeline vandalism and years of underinvestment eroded production.
Nigeria is currently pumping roughly 1.5 million barrels a day of crude and condensate, according to the OPEC+ Survey compiled by Platts, part of S&P Global Energy.
Faster, Bigger Bid Rounds
Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 has already compressed a licensing cycle that once ran five to ten years between rounds. Auctions have grown steadily since: the 2022/23 mini bid round covered seven blocks, 2024 offered 19, and the 2025 round — the country’s second in as many years — expanded to 50 blocks spanning the Niger Delta, and the Benin, Anambra and Chad basins.
Thirty-seven of those 50 licenses were awarded in July.
Eyesan, who took over midway through the 2025 round, wants to lock in an annual cadence going forward, with a six-to-seven-month turnaround on future auctions.
“These will be annual, if possible, even twice-annual events. At a minimum, we’ll be going to the market on an annual basis,” she said.
The next round is set to launch by early October, drawing on new deepwater, shallow-water and possibly frontier onshore acreage, including 13 blocks that went unlicensed in the 2025 round and are returning to the pool.
NUPRC is projecting the 2025 awards will add 300,000 barrels a day of output within three years, with a standing target of 300,000-600,000 barrels a day of incremental production from each future round.
But Eyesan is signaling a tighter screen on what reaches the market next time. “I knew we were going to have a problem with some of the blocks,” she said, acknowledging the regulator “took a gamble” on some licenses included in the last round prematurely, and promising a stricter focus on bringing only “viable assets” to auction.
Courting New Entrants, Not Majors
The exit of Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and Eni from Nigeria’s onshore acreage over the past several years has pushed NUPRC to cultivate a new generation of operators to drive inland growth.
“For this round, we were very mindful that the target audience was not overtly going to be the major players in the industry,” Eyesan said, pointing to newer entrants such as Renaissance and First E&P as recent success stories.
New “drill-or-drop” rules are designed to curb the passive license holding that has stalled development in the past. Shallow-water blocks in the 2025 round were awarded for three years with an option to extend, while deepwater and frontier concessions carry five-year terms.
Even as onshore acreage shifts toward newer, smaller operators, deepwater remains Nigeria’s centerpiece pitch to international majors.
Shell, Eni and ExxonMobil all have major expansion projects offshore, and the sole deepwater block on offer in the latest round, PPL 2010, drew major-league interest, with Chevron ultimately winning the offshore Niger Delta license.
NUPRC is targeting $30 billion-$50 billion of new investment across 22 deepwater projects by 2030, aided by new tax incentives and what Eyesan described as a shift in how investors weigh West African risk following the US-Iran war.
“I think it’s enhanced the way the investors analyze and look at their presence in West Africa,” she said.
Feeding Dangote, Eyeing a Bigger OPEC Quota
Nigeria’s upstream strategy is increasingly shaped by its downstream buildout. Since the 700,000 barrel-a-day Dangote refinery began operations in 2024, Nigeria has developed a major domestic outlet for its own crude.
The refinery has drawn on Nigerian crude for 77% of its feedstock, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data, even as Dangote has pushed back on what it calls unreliable crude availability and loading terminals, friction that is expected to intensify once the refinery’s expansion doubles its capacity.
Eyesan backs the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority’s ambition to route all of the country’s crude to local refiners by 2030, framing it as integrated growth that Nigerian officials have also cited to justify a push for a higher OPEC production quota — currently fixed at 1.5 million barrels a day since 2024.
In practice, Nigeria’s Domestic Crude Supply Obligation already mandates fixed local delivery volumes, but producers can and do favor better-priced export buyers. To close that gap, NUPRC is developing a compliance trading platform that would let overfulfilling producers swap certificates with export-oriented ones.
Still, Eyesan drew a line on how far the domestic mandate should reach into Dangote’s commercial decisions, arguing the refiner should be free to source on pure economics.
“I would not begrudge Dangote if [it’s] not picking up domestic crude,” she said, noting it might not be prudent for the refiner to buy Nigerian grades when cheaper alternatives are available.
Once its expansion is complete, Dangote will have the capacity to process nearly all of Nigeria’s current crude output, excluding volumes from state-backed refining projects and newbuilds.
Even so, Eyesan remains confident Nigeria’s resource base can outgrow that ceiling.
“I think Nigeria has a potential very easily to get to 4 million barrels in another 8-10 years,” she said.
Follow the MoneyCentral Nigeria channel on WhatsApp: Click here!
