NUPRC chief Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan says blocks left unworked past three years onshore and five years offshore will be called in by month-end. The answer to “why now” is a licensing round that produced winners with no capacity to drill.
What is actually being revoked
The Federal Government begins a mass recovery of idle oil blocks next week, executed by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. The directive is narrow and specific: any licence holder awarded a Petroleum Prospecting Licence in the 2022/2023 and 2024 licensing rounds that has carried out no qualifying activity past the statutory window — three years onshore, five years offshore — will lose the asset.
NUPRC Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan confirmed a circular has been issued. “By the 31st of this month, those who were awarded licences and have not done anything within the stipulated time, the commission will call in those blocks,” she said Tuesday in Lagos at a two-day onboarding workshop for the new licence holders.
Why now
The timing answers a credibility problem rather than a legal one. Eyesan acknowledged being asked whether the threat was empty: “If you want to wait and see the blocking, I wish you good luck. 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, people do not just sit on assets.”
Behind the deadline is a failure pattern NUPRC says it has now documented across two rounds. Successful bidders assembled technical teams to win the acreage, then disbanded them after the award — leaving no engineering capacity to explore, develop or produce. Months were then spent chasing a technical partner or financing, followed by a request for more time.
That route is now closed. “That is not going to suffice. It’s not enough ground for extension. An extension is not automatic,” Eyesan said. Ownership, she stressed, requires more than the money to buy a licence: it demands specialised knowledge and proper corporate structure.
The evidence the regulator is citing
NUPRC reviewed outcomes from earlier licensing rounds and from the divestment of oil fields by international oil companies, and found the results sharply divergent. Some domestic operators lifted output from fields their foreign predecessors had left undeveloped. Others took over producing assets and watched output fall. The difference, in both cases, was technical capacity on the ground at handover — the same quality the commission is now refusing to assume.
What it means for operators
For genuine developers, the revocation is relief: acreage returns to the pool for parties able to work it. For speculators, the holding pattern is over. For new entrants still on the workshop floor, the instruction was to build the team, secure the funding and structure the company before the licence is won — not after.
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