Ojo, Ikhanoba, Ladipo, Scramble Up The Hill

Orchard Hill Oil and Gas Limited is waiting for the start of the next race for Nigerian marginal fields. The company is managed by such ranking Nigerian Industry professionals as Jide Ojo, Kehinde Ladipo and John Ikhanoba who, between them, have over 80 years of experience in the industry. Ojo and Ladipo are career petroleum geologists; Ikhanoba comes from the financial and project advisory side of things. Ikhanoba and Ladipo are Shell alumni. Ojo has had much more varied journey; in the course of his career he has worked at Shell, ExxonMobil, Statoil, Conoil and Addax.
The team also includes Gbenga Biobaku, a Nigerian oil and gas lawyer with a quarter of a century experience. In 2012 Orchard Hill signed with UK based Safari Petroleum Plc to pursue the Marginal Field Bid Round and will provide further financial and technical support according to the agreements. Safari is headed by the prominent American investor, Steven Marshall, in addition to the Africa savvy firm of African Investment Partners chaired by Randgold founder Mark Bristow, and Stuart Faulkner an executive of Strand Hanson, an energy bank in London.

Jide Ojo

Kehinde Ladipo

Safari and Orchard Hill have since 2012 retained SP Offshore Energy Services who provides further project based support with some former Addax top technical  employees who claim expertise in operations, engineering, evaluation and  project management. SP Offshore is run by Dayo Koku, an economist and former banker and Scott Spears who, the company website describes as having acted “as a Director or Managing Director for several E&P companies with operations bases in Nigeria, South Africa, Mauritius as well as the Comoros.”