It was a convivial atmosphere in the marquee on the premises of the Abuja Hilton, where the Bid Conference was held to decide the winners of the eight month long, Nigerian 2025 oil and gas licencing sale, on July 21, 2026.
“If you don’t win this round, there is a next time”, chorused the country’s two Ministers of state for Petroleum (gas and oil).
Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of state for Petroleum (oil), elicited a roar of laughter in the packed hall, when he jokingly lamented that the country’s five year old Petroleum Industry Act PIA had discarded the notion of Ministerial discretion in awarding licences. “I wish I was in another Ministry”, he said.
She said that NEITI was present to observe the relevant evaluation and bid-opening procedures, in order to enhance the integrity of the process.
“It is evident that allocating petroleum rights is a matter of public trust, requiring a process that can withstand independent scrutiny. NEITI’s involvement demonstrates Nigeria’s commitment to internationally recognised standards of transparency and accountability in natural resource management”.
There were murmurs in the hall when Dutchford E&P was announced as receiving a score of 100% in the evaluation of the technical and commercial submissions for the bid for the Yorla field – Petroleum Prospecting Licence (PPL) 2A 32, beating NNPC E&P Ltd and 10 other contestants to win the asset.
That result was the third of the 37 that were announced and the rest of the contest appeared to continue, in the same celebratory air with which it started.
At the close of the proceedings, Africa Oil+Gas Report asked a retired manager at one of the major oil companies, who acclaimed the round as being “most transparent and impressively executed”. His own entry failed for a reason he couldn’t fault: “We missed consideration of our Commercial package because our Bid Guarantee wasn’t uploaded on the NUPRC portal. We brought a hardcopy to Abuja but it wasn’t tenable by the process”, he explained. “We say: “Never give up” though this is expensive”, he clarified.
Africa Oil+Gas Report left the premises sharing that same perspective.
Two winners we spoke to, in the immediate aftermath, didn’t think there were deliberate fudging of the process but they thought things could be better run. “The removal of technical pass/fail gate, making all bidders to proceed to commercial evaluation, made the process vulnerable”, one winner argued. “A bidder with a weak technical submission can now win a block on the strength of commercial bid precisely reversing the Commission’s stated objective”. That’s one. “There were no scored rubric or minimum threshold for Technical Evaluation (Schedule H)”, the winner continued. “Without anchored scoring bands, evaluator discretion is unconstrained”. The argument is that “polished documentation could potentially substitute for genuine technical capability. Potential for inconsistent scoring across bids.”
A former director of one of the country’s hydroarbon regulatory agencies told Africa Oil+Gas Report that “the overall evaluation of submissions needs to be improved. A score of 100% will always look suspicious”. He observed that “there were side talks during the announcement and on the floor changes and they should not be condoned”. He then emphasised that: “the commission must find a way to improve the due diligence on bidders by way of engaging them to presentations, questions and answers as part of the overall process”.
These submissions turned out to be extremely generous compared with the responses we got from other bidders and observers as the week progressed. Our respondents have largely chosen to be anonymous.
“The president (Ahmed Bola Tinubu) decided everything 100%”, one bidder remarked. “For each PPL, he chose the winner and passed it to NUPRC to permutate the criteria from the backend of the IT application”.
The bidder offered no evidence for this claim and when we pressed, he offered: “I don’t know your gauge for transparency, but do we expect there would be no human interference with the process? We haven’t attained that standard as a people”.
Some came across far more embittered. “The commercial is an embarrassment” one bidder declared. “There is no way on earth that their criteria for 100% (40/40); which implies 100% work programme guarantee will generate a profitable economics…Most “winners” scored 40/40 commercial. One genius even scored 100% overall. It is unbelievable”. He paused. “I worked all the prolific asset.. from a shortlist of 10 through the final two picks… all were barely marginal by any shade of robust economics”, he offered. “Considering that work programme guarantee is sunk cost through the plan cycle, it is a heavy strain on the project economics. Then, the signature bonus cap at $7Milion is stretch enough. But you had people calling $15Million to $21Milion”.
When Africa Oil+Gas Report countered that those figures should not be construed as meaning that the process was fudged, he responded: “Either they would never pay, when a more obejective assessment by the financiers finally points them to the realities. Or, they have a plan to go back to NUPRC to rig back those signature bonuses and work programme commitments”.
One invited observer to the process dismissed the bid as non transparent. “Everyone who won has some form of political affiliation. I also saw some elements of influence from NUPRC staff especially those that worked on the technical scoring. Technical was weighted 60% that means companies won bids by just scoring very high >50% in the technical e.g Dutchford, who scored 60% in an asset that does not have a (Three dimensional) 3D Seismic data”
Does anyone have ideas to make things better?
“This is what I expect”, one responder said: 1) That NUPRC evaluators will pull our each party’s technical output- the profiles.2) input their costs 3) generate base case economics 4) score flawed (dubious and criminal) economics zero (technical and commercial)5) then proceed with the serious bidders.
One bidder recommends the reinstatement of a minimum technical qualification threshold. “Only bidders exceeding the threshold should have commercial bids opened and aggregated. This preserves competition among qualified bidders while excluding unqualified ones”.
The bidder also calls for introduction of a 1–5 scoring rubric with defined descriptors per score band for each evaluation parameter.
“Establish a minimum aggregate technical score (e.g., 60%) below which commercial bids are not opened.
“Publish weightings for Technical Bids and Commercial Bids. We recommend equal weights for technical score and commercial score to ensure both technical and commercial quality equally influence the winning bid determination”.
