By Oluwatobi Odeyinka
Is Seplat Energy likely to be caught foraging for hydrocarbon in the frontiers of Angola or Tanzania?
Roger Brown, the Chief Executive Officer of Seplat Energy Ltd, reiterated the company’s commitment to developing its Nigerian assets even though it is interested in expanding its portfolio beyond the country.
Mr Brown was a panellist at the 50th anniversary of the National Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) in Lagos recently.
Austin Avuru, Chair of the event’s panel session, who himself was Seplat’s co-founder, posed the question: “Roger, try and talk us through the possibility of a Nigerian independent being an African champion. Are you likely to be found in Angola, for instance, or Tanzania in the future as a Nigerian company?”
Seplat’s portfolio spreads across the oil and gas value chain in Nigeria, with its recent acquisition of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited expanding its positions by four more acreages, including Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 67, 68, 70, and 104, in the south east offshore Niger Delta, as well as operating stakes in the Qua Iboe and the Bonny River terminals.
“When the “subsurface guys go to Chad, Congo, or any other place in Africa, they say ‘that’s nice, but can we go back to Nigeria, please”
Brown responded that the 16 year old company was focused on fully developing these new assets and having its feet solid on the ground in Nigeria before expanding to other African countries.
“It’s funny, when you announce a deal, all the questions you get are when you’re going to close the deal. The day you close the deal, the next question you get, when’s the next deal?
“When you go to the buffet, and you fill your plate, and you’ve got lots of food on your plate. It’s really important to eat it before you go back to the buffet and get some more. It’s so important to do that. It’s a dual track. You’ve got to deliver on what you have. And we all have massive investment for integrity, maintenance, building capacity.
“We need to drill. We’re going to do some exploration. There’s lots of stuff we can do in our existing portfolio.”
Seplat also plays a significant role in Nigeria’s gas-to-power infrastructure, supplying over 300Million standard cubic feet of gas per day from the Oben gas processing plant in OML 4 in the western Niger Delta, mostly to power plants as well as completing the 300MMscf/d ANOH gas plant in OML 53 in the eastern Niger Delta, ready for similar purpose.
Brown added that the subsurface in Nigeria is better than many other African countries and when the “subsurface guys go to Chad, Congo, or any other place in Africa, they say ‘that’s nice, but can we go back to Nigeria, please?”
He stressed that if the company would be expanding its portfolio in the continent, it would be additive and considerably big, “there is no point doing something small.”
