Nigeria's frontier gamble: What 37 New oil blocks reveal about Africa's changing energy map

For most of Nigeria's history as an oil producer, exploration has meant one place: the Niger Delta, where Shell first struck commercial crude at Oloibiri in 1956 and where the bulk of the country's proven reserves still sit. So when the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission concluded its 2025 Licensing Round in Abuja on 21 July, awarding 37 oil and gas blocks to 31 companies, the geography mattered as much as the numbers. For the first time in Nigeria's licensing history, frontier basins far from the Delta, the Benue Trough, the Chad Basin, the Anambra Basin and the Benin Basin, drew what regulators called serious, competitive investor interest.

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