Exxon Shuns Ongoing Licensing Round, Focuses on Deepwater Projects
Stories by Peter Uzoho
Multinational oil company, ExxonMobil is not participating in the ongoing 2025/2026 Nigeria’s oil licensing round being conducted by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) as it focuses on developing its deepwater projects in the Niger Delta.
Chairman and Managing Director of ExxonMobil Affiliates in Nigeria, Mr. Jagir Baxi disclosed this during an interview with THISDAY.
In the current licensing round, 50 oil and gas blocks spread across onshore, swamp, shallow water and offshore terrains as well as frontier basins are offered for sale as part of efforts to boost exploration activities and increase Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves and production.
In the 50 blocks up for bid, 15 are onshore assets; 19 are from shallow water; frontier assets are 15; while the deep water asset is one.
Last month, NUPRC announced the completion of the pre-qualification stage of the bid exercise and notified successful pre-qualified applicants accordingly.
Currently, the licensing round is in the stage of leasing data in preparation for the technical and commercial bid submissions.
The government slashed the signature bonus to $3 million for onshore and shallow water blocks and $7 million for deepwater blocks and expects to rake in about $10 billion in revenues and extract up to 400,000 barrels per day in oil production when the assets begin producing.
However, the ExxonMobil executive, who acknowledged the ongoing licensing round in Nigeria, said specifically that the company was not participating, citing their attention to getting a couple of their projects towards Final Investment Decision (FID).
These projects include the Owowo oilfield development estimated to cost between $7 billion to $8 billion plus, the Usan infill drilling programme with a cost size of around $1billion as well as the Erha extension programme.
The company also plans to invest between $15 billion to $16 billion in the development of the Bosi oilfield within the next five years.
Baxi said: “No, we are not. We’ve chosen not to. We assessed last year’s licensing round and this one. The essential reason for that is that we view that participating in the licensing round will lead us to do one of two things. One, we need to be clear that we want to make that commitment, but I have three large commitments we’ve talked about. I’d prefer to make sure they mature.
“It’s just a capital choice at this point. Then, the other is that our very best capability that we can bring to Nigeria from our global organisation is to the development of deep-water resources that we can see. So we have chosen to keep our attention on our discoveries that are available and need development.”
