SEPLAT: Avuru Leaves the Helm after 10 Years, Brown Takes Full Charge

Austin Avuru will be handing over the executive running of SEPLAT Petroleum Development Company Plc, to Roger Brown, on the last day of July 2020.

It is exactly the 10^th year to the day the company, a dual listed (London and NSE) independent, received Ministerial consent for the purchase of Shell/TOTAL/ENI’s 45% stakes in Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 4, 38, and 41, in northwestern Niger Delta basin. That day is widely considered, in company lore, as the foundational date.

Austin Avuru will run a Family Office from August 1, 2020

“In these 10 years, Avuru led the development of a strong organization, the deployment of agile systems, processes and stakeholder relationships that allowed the organization to grow rapidly from a gross production of 22,700Barrels of Oil Equivalent Per Day (BOEPD) as at December 2010 to peaks of 111,368BOEPD gross production as at December 2018 through major drilling campaigns and major new Oil and Gas plants development”, a release by the company says.

Brown has his work cut out. The company has the $700Million Asa North Ohaji South (ANOH) natural gas development project to deliver and the newly merged 30,000BOPD Eland Oil and Gas Plc to bring into strategic fit with SEPLAT. He is taking charge in an unprecedentedly challenging season for the fossil fuel industry.

Brown is a 1992 graduate of the University of Dundee who started out as Financial Advisor at PwC, and grew into reckoning in investment circles in the 12 years he spent at Standard Bank. He joined SEPLAT in 2013 as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), has been on the board of directors for seven of the company’s 10 years.

Prior to joining SEPLAT, Brown was an advisor to the Company since 2010 while he was the Managing Director and head of EMEA Oil and Gas at Standard Bank Group. “During his time at the bank, he was instrumental in providing advice and deploying capital across the African continent in the Oil & Gas, Power & Infrastructure and the renewable energy sectors”, the company had said, while announcing Brown as MD designate in November 2019.

Brown brings to the CEO role, a deep knowledge of the Company in his 6 years as the CFO and a member of the Board. He has strong financial, commercial and M&A experience as well as proven people skills which will be an asset as the Company embarks on the next phase of its growth plan.

Avuru will remain on the bard of the company as a non-executive director. He will also be running a family office, AA Holdings. And he certainly will be very busy in the African investing landscape.