The Commission Chief Executive, NUPRC, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, said this in Lagos on Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at a two-day onboarding workshop for the new awardees themed, ‘From Award to Production: Delivering Nigeria’s Upstream Potential Under the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021’.
Fielding questions from journalists on the sideline of the event, Eyesan said the Commission decided to organise the onboarding programme in order to guide new awardees.
“For this set of awardees, we are expecting nothing less than 250,000 barrels per day in the next five years at least from the 22 awards,” Eyesan said, adding that Nigeria remains on course to hit 3mmbopd by 2030.
The first day of the onboarding programme was attended by subject matter experts from the Commission as well as several notable professionals from legal and financial institutions who provided firsthand knowledge to the new awardees.
The first day of the workshop covered five technical sessions from award of the licence to production of first oil.
Focus areas included: regulatory framework, work programme, exploration, appraisal and commerciality, field development, well operations and production as well as exploration financing.
Eyesan advised the new awardees to learn from the successes and mistakes of past winners.
She restated the October 31, 2026 deadline for the revocation of idle oil and gas licences in line with the drill or drop provision enshrined in the Petroleum Industry Act.
Eyesan added, “We have issued a directive that by the end of this month, those who were awarded licenses, and have not done anything within the stipulated time – three years for those onshore and five years for those offshore – the Commission will call in those blocks.
“It's going to be drill or drop. This is standard practice all over the world. In the UK, in the Netherlands, all over the world.”
The chief executive therefore noted that such extensions would no longer be granted automatically.
“We want to see that in the next two years, more than half of you have reached first oil. In the next three, four years, you are drilling your second well.”
Eniola Akinkuotu
Head, Media and Corporate Communications