An indigenous Nigerian oil company, Oando Plc has rolled out drums to celebrate 30 years of existence with a track record of outstanding services in the oil industry. Oando Plc with a humble beginning in 1994, has charted its course and set an envious track record. Oando Plc, one of sub-Saharan Africa’s leading indigenous energy companies, is an idea whose time has come. In reminiscence, its paths in the nation’s oil and gas industry, beginning in 1994 with the establishment of Ocean and Oil Services Limited, had been laced with more roses than thorns.
How Oando began
At the outset, the visionaries, Jubril Adewale Tinubu, Omamofe Boyo and Onajite Okoloko, who could be regarded as kindred spirits, had a burning ambition and were not disappointed by any perceived boulder in their way. Though many industry watchers didn’t anticipate their coming, it wasn’t a case of a bridge too far or a river so deep and wide to cross for these business wizards. Ocean and Oil Services Limited was established to supply diesel and Low-Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) to various shipping firms and offshore exploration companies in Nigeria.
It was no doubt a humble beginning, as the budding oil company started only with a vessel, MT Carolina, anchored in Bonny Island, Rivers State, to supply diesel and Low-Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) to off-shore companies from the Port-Harcourt, Rivers State refinery. Interestingly, just six years after its emergence in the nation’s thriving oil market, Ocean and Oil Services Limited began to show flashes of a potentially big player, particularly with the acquisition of six ships. This development shocked its morbid critics, who didn’t give it any chance of survival.
In 2000, Tinubu and his co-travellers on this ambitious journey jolted industry watchers when they expressed interest in acquiring a 30% controlling interest in the defunct Unipetrol. The move swiftly responded to the government’s decision to sell its controlling 60% stake in Unipetrol Plc, an integrated downstream oil marketing company. In hindsight, the show of interest by the partners had come with some mild drama from the least-expected quarter. Those in the know at the time claimed that a former Managing Director of the defunct Unipetrol had laughed it off as a colossal joke.
It was alleged that he thought it was inconceivable that Ocean and Oil Services Limited, an upstart company, would acquire an already top-quoted company on the Lagos Stock Exchange. Foray into the oil sector But before the eyes of the renowned seasoned technocrat and other nitpickers, the planned acquisition went without a hitch. By 2001, Ocean and Oil Services had increased its shares in Unipetrol to 42%.
The company wrought this magic with impressive support from its foreign technical partners, Compagnia Espanola De Petroleos (CEPSA), the second-largest oil group in Spain. Again, in 2002, these enterprising and go-getting businessmen fortuitously became the object of global interest when Ocean and Oil Services Limited acquired a 60% stake in Agip Nigeria Plc.
It all began when Agip Petroli International BV of Italy decided to divest from the downstream sector. With their eyes fixed on the future, the business partners, after broad consultations and meetings of minds, bought over the foreign company’s shares and added Agip Nigeria Plc, the company’s local subsidiary to their portfolio, using an N9.2 billion four-year syndicated loan from a consortium of local and international lenders to finance its purchase. About a year later, in 2003, the newly acquired companies were merged, resulting in the historic birth of Oando Limited.
That singular audacious move, in the eyes of many players in the industry, spoke to the sense and rhyme in the saying of Henry Ford, an American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company that “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.”
Indeed, if anyone had thumped his chest that it would take the partners aeons to break into the international market, he was mistaken! Their success story has defied all imaginable hypotheses, as Oando Plc secured a cross-border listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa in 2005!
Oando spreads its tentacles
Indeed, if you could undertake an anatomy of Oando, which has become like a multi-trunk tree, you would marvel at the tireless efforts of Tinubu and his partners to constantly keep the company one of the most talked about in the energy business, locally and internationally. In a spate of three decades, Tinubu and his partners have been able to maintain their preeminence in the sector owing to the value-added services rendered by the company’s subsidiaries: Oando Marketing Limited, OML, one of the largest downstream petroleum marketing companies in Nigeria with over 500 retail outlets across Nigeria, Ghana, and Togo; Oando Supply and Trading Limited, OST, one of the largest independent traders of crude and refined petroleum products in sub-Saharan Africa incorporated in 2004;
Others are Oando Gas & Power Limited, OGP, a pioneer in the development of Nigeria’s foremost gas distribution network, spanning 264km and serving over 150 industrial and commercial customers in Lagos, Calabar and Port Harcourt, incorporated in 2004; Oando Energy Services Limited, OES, Nigeria’s largest Indigenous oilfield services provider incorporated in 2005 to enhance Indigenous participation with a fleet of 5 rigs; Oando Energy Resources, OER, one of Nigeria’s foremost Indigenous upstream oil and gas companies. In his subconscious, Tinubu, the Group Chief Executive Officer of GCEO, has always desired to make the company stand head and shoulders above its competitors.
Breaking new grounds
This may explain why, about 10 years into its operations, Oando set forth on the upstream journey by securing a 42.75% interest in the marginal field, OML 56. It steadied its feet in 2007 by acquiring a 15% stake in OML 125 and OML 134.
Still growing stronger, it acquired a 30% interest in the Akepo marginal field, OML 90, in 2008. Again, acquiring an 81.5% interest in Equator Exploration Limited in 2009 was another exciting chapter in the company’s annals. Three years later, in 2012, Oando was awarded 100% of the Blocks in Sao Tome EEZ. Even so, history is replete with how Oando Energy Resources, OER, had, in 2014, acquired ConocoPhillips Nigerian assets for $1.8bn (inclusive of working capital), secured a 20% interest in the NAOC-Joint Venture (“the JV”) and augmented its total net 2P reserves to 503 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe), with peak net production levels of 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (kboep/d). In 2016, industry watchers were astounded when news broke that the Company was divesting from its Naira-earning businesses to focus on its US earning portfolio.
Though the reactions were not unexpected, it was a well-considered move by the management, which was in the periodic sale of its interest in the downstream between 2016 and 2019 and its stake in the midstream in 2017.
A commitment to the environment
So far, Tinubu has proven that they can see tomorrow today! In 2021, the Company added Oando Clean Energy Limited to its portfolio. Though it aims to design and deliver clean energy projects, it seeks to fast-track Nigeria’s energy requirements while fulfilling the United Nation’s Race to Net Zero. How more timely can Oando Clean Energy be? Soon after its launch, the Lagos Government rushed to its door to recognise the project’s boundless benefits.
Contrary to some quarters, it didn’t take forever for the Company and the Lagos State Government to sign an MoU to replace the state’s mass transit bus system with electric buses and the supporting infrastructure. Given this, the Company rolled out two electric mass transit buses in May 2023 to fulfil the Proof-of-Concept Phase, with 552 buses to be secured by the end of 2023. Ten years after the widely reported purchase of ConocoPhillips’ Nigerian asset, Oando, in August 2024, completed the acquisition of 100% of Eni’s interest in NAOC, the operating company of the JV. Thus, Eni increased its stake in the JV from 20% to 40%, secured operatorship of the JV, and doubled its 2P reserves to 996.2mb.
In a surprising twist of fate, the company recorded an unsavoury development for the first time in its long years of operations when it announced a loss of N184bn in the 2014 financial year. Today, it has become Nigeria’s largest non-government-owned company in the energy industry, and its market value has soared to record highs, from N74 billion in 2023 to N1 trillion.
As it celebrates its 30th anniversary, everyone waits with bated breath for the next move from the man known for being very bullish about diversifying Oando’s operations as he establishes footprints along the value chain.
Oando set to roll out 12,000 Electric buses in Nigeria Legit.ng previously reported that Oando Clean Energy has announced the plan to roll out 12,000 electric buses nationwide. The scheme is part of the firm’s commitment to help Nigeria’s journey towards net-zero emissions by 2060, which aligns with the global climate change agenda.
