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NIGERIA

Nigeria to open bids on 40 oil and gas blocks Nov. 20: what it means for Canadian suppliers

Nigeria's upstream regulator opens its bid portal for 40 oil and gas blocks on Nov. 20. Last round's winners faced US$3m–7m signature bonuses and a 90-day deadline. Here is where Canadian suppliers fit.

Citi Sighs5 MIN
High-rise buildings on Victoria Island, Lagos, under a cloudy sky

Victoria Island, Lagos. Photo: Onaopemipo Oladipupo / Unsplash

By the Citi Sighs Intelligence Desk — Toronto, November 3, 2026

TORONTO — Nigeria's upstream oil regulator says it will open the online bid portal for its 2026 licensing round on Nov. 20, offering 40 oil and gas blocks across land, shallow-water and deepwater acreage to local and foreign investors. Commission Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan gave the date on Monday at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi, according to a commission statement reported by Nairametrics.

Few Canadian founders will bid for a block themselves, but each round creates new licence-holders with work commitments, and Canada's Trade Commissioner Service lists Nigerian oil and gas as a market for Canadian technology and engineering. The last round handed 37 blocks to 31 companies, and winners had 90 days from their offer letters to meet award conditions. Their work programmes will shape who buys what.

What changed

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) announced the round on Oct. 6 at its fifth-anniversary event in Abuja, with President Bola Tinubu's approval. It said the blocks are open to investors with the technical competence, financial capacity and commitment to develop Nigeria's petroleum resources. On advice from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), it said the round's guidelines will require every bidder to disclose its beneficial owners and that results will be published more fully.

What is new this week is the date. Speaking on Nov. 2, Eyesan said the bid portal would launch on Nov. 20, Premium Times reported. She cited the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021, executive orders signed by President Tinubu, fiscal incentives and improved security as reasons for investors to look again.

Status: the round is formally launched, but the portal is not yet open. NUPRC said block details, qualification rules and procedures would follow on its website and a dedicated portal.

What it means in practice

  • What winning cost last time: in the 2025 round, signature bonuses ranged from US$3 million to US$7 million per block depending on location and asset, ThisDay reported. Nairametrics reported that this was down from US$10 million in 2024. Bonuses are set in US dollars; 2026 levels have not been published.
  • How fast it moves: 2025 winners had 90 days from their offer letters to meet conditions or lose the block, according to ThisDay. NUPRC says final awards come only after the signature bonus is paid and the Minister of Petroleum Resources approves under the PIA, and that it enforces a "drill or drop" provision (NUPRC).
  • Where service firms fit: Canada's Trade Commissioner Service lists digital oilfield tools, gas-processing and pipeline engineering, gas-flare commercialisation (gas-to-liquids, CNG and LNG) and emissions solutions as openings for Canadian firms in Nigeria. It also notes that Nigeria's local-content law limits foreign participation, requires partnering with local companies for certain oil-sector activities and gives local firms priority on upstream contracts.

Context

The 2025 round offered 50 blocks; 143 companies submitted 200 bids, 37 blocks drew bids and 31 companies won, according to NUPRC. The commission said frontier basins — the Benue Trough and the Chad, Anambra and Benin basins — drew a level of investor interest not seen before. The 13 blocks that drew no bids were in frontier areas that the commission said had not yet been de-risked, ThisDay reported.

NUPRC has tied licensing to wider targets. On Oct. 6 it said it aims to restore more than 788,000 barrels per day of shut-in production across 63 operators and move offshore projects worth an estimated US$30 billion to US$50 billion to final investment decision. NUPRC said in June that the petroleum minister had approved the 2026 round under the PIA.

Nigerian firms now supply much more of the industry. Nigerian content rose from 5% in 2010 to 61%, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board's executive secretary, Felix Ogbe, said in October, adding that the board links Nigerian companies with foreign firms and equipment makers (Nairametrics). At the same event, the chair of the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria said indigenous operators still face high entry costs, slow approvals and thin funding. The Trade Commissioner Service says Canadian equipment makers have a limited share of the sector, with local players preferring familiar US and UK suppliers.

What to watch next

  • Nov. 20: the portal opens. Look for the guidelines, block list, fees, qualification criteria and timetable.
  • Whether 2026 signature bonuses stay near the 2025 range, and when awards are due.

The case for and against

The case for: Nigeria now runs rounds regularly — at least four between 2021 and 2026, Eyesan said — and the 2025 round drew 143 bidders. Regular rounds can mean steady demand for seismic, data, engineering and gas-handling services from a wide set of operators.

The case against: the 2026 terms are not public, so no one can yet price a bid or service contract. Eyesan acknowledged that investors weigh execution risk, cost, delays and uncertainty. Local-content rules require a Nigerian partner for certain activities, which the Trade Commissioner Service says takes extensive due diligence to find. And new acreage raises questions about flaring, host communities and Nigeria's 2060 carbon-neutrality target, also cited by the Trade Commissioner Service.

Citi Sighs analysis — In our view, for most Canadian service and technology founders the opportunity lies in selling to block-holders rather than bidding. Firms weighing that route would do well to know the 31 companies that won in 2025, understand which Nigerian partners meet local-content rules, and read the guidelines when the portal opens on Nov. 20 — the qualification and beneficial-ownership rules should show who can realistically win. Gas-flare, emissions and digital-oilfield products appear best placed, given the Trade Commissioner Service's list. Evidence on 2026 fiscal terms is thin until the guidelines are out, so we think large commitments can wait for them.

What we could not verify

  • The 2026 block list, fees, signature bonuses and full timetable: not on NUPRC's website when we checked.
  • NUPRC's Nov. 2 statement: we could not find it on NUPRC's website and relied on Nairametrics and Premium Times. Outlets quote Eyesan's remark on execution risk differently, so we paraphrased it.
  • The 90-day compliance window comes from ThisDay; we did not find it in NUPRC's own release.
  • The Trade Commissioner Service page carries a June 2026 date in its metadata but a 2024 modification date in its footer, so parts may be dated.
  • Premium Times dates the round's launch Oct. 7; NUPRC's own release says Oct. 6, which we use.
  • Naira equivalents of the US-dollar bonuses; we did not convert them.

Disclosure: Citi Sighs has no commercial relationship with any company or institution named in this article. This article is general information, not tax, legal or investment advice.

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