Oando Makes $$Millions In Rest Of Africa, 18% of sales outside Nigeria boosts the company’s Pan African credentials

Oando, the energy company listed on the Nigerian and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges, has reported total sales of $43omillion in its 2008 financial year, from countries outside Nigeria, the company’s domicile. This “external revenue”, earned largely from trading in petroleum products in the neighbouring countries of Ghana and Togo, makes up about 1800 of the entire sales figure of $2.25billion in the financial year. This particular result is a boost to Oando’s regional, pan African claims. Oando has made significant noise about its regional ambitions. In 2005, it chose to announce its secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the continent’s pre-eminent bourse, during the World Petroleum Congress held in Johannesburg, South Africa. In October, 2009, Oando won the bid to partner the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation to “develop assets and infrastructure to harness the gas that will be produced from Jubilee”, the country’s flagship deepwater field. With a listing in South Africa, profitable product trading in Togo and Ghana, gas(midstream) infrastructure, oil field upstream production and technical services as well as an extensive product retail network in Nigeria, Oando can claim to have gone a distance, to qualify as a regional leader. But there’s a long road ahead, to catch up with companies like Sasol (South Africa’s synfuel giant) and Oraseom Construction(Egyptian conglomerate with forays into gas-based fertilizer, cement etc).