Jumoke Ajayi has resigned as CEO of Ingentia Energies, which operates the Egbolom field in Petroleum Mining Licence (PML) 66 in eastern Niger Delta basin.
She resumes at the West Africa E&P Ltd., after an accumulated leave.
A very challenging work scope awaits Ajayi at WAEP, an upstream subsidiary of the Dangote Group, which purchased Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 71&72 from Shell, TOTAL & ENI in 2015 and has been unable to take it to production in those 11 years, in part due to issues with NNPC Ltd, the 60% partner in the WAEP-NNPC OMLs 71&72 Joint Venture, and in part due to the reluctance of WAEP’s founder, the billionaire Aliko Dangote, to enthusiastically invest in upstream crude production business, at a time he was stressing about the deliverability and market challenges facing his 650,000Barrel Per Stream Day Refinery, which started operations in September 2024, after a construction period of over nine years.
It could thus be said that WAEP has been one of those companies who have sat on their upstream assets for an inordinate amount of time, and for whom the “drill or drop” rule by Nigerian regulatory authorities should apply.
With crude supply to the refinery now at the top of his concerns, Aliko Dangote is keen to revv up production at OMLs 71&72, which had earlier produced crude oil between 1985 and 2002, peaking in 1999 at 22,000BOPD, long before Shell&Co decided to divest from them.
In the last six months, the Technical Management at WAEP had moved faster than at any time since 2015 to kick the fields back into production. The operator has been carrying out extended well tests on each of the two strings in 12 of the hitherto producing wells on the Kalaekule field, the prime field in the two OMLs. Africa Oil+Gas Report reported in its December 2025 monthly e-copy issue that the company was testing one string at a time on every well. ”The important number will be when all the 12 wells (meaning 24) strings) have been tested and we flow the wells together. We can then talk about Kalaekule production”, the magazine quoted a source in that report.
This is where Ms. Ajayi takes charge.
She has refrained from talking about her remit at WAEP, but Africa Oil+Gas Report learns that Mr. Dangote expects as high as 140,000BOPD, or one fifth of the current input capacity of the refinery, to flow from WAEP by 2030. Africa Oil+Gas Report has glimpsed a play map of the upside prospects in OMLs 71&72. On paper, it adds up, but we are certain the target is a tall order.
Ajayi will make a good run for it.
The new CEO joined Ingentia in 2022 and helped the company reach production of the Egbolom field at terribly short notice. She said of the company’s route to production: “We reached technical first oil in April, precisely 27th of April 2024, we brought oil to surface, and we immediately started the installation of early production equipment in our facility, which is about 10,000 barrels capacity. By July 2024, we had commissioned it and started flowing crude through it. And ever since, we’ve started production, and then our second well test started in early August 2024, and it’s been running till date. Yes, our expectation, based on forecast before we entered the well, was 3,000 barrels”.
Under her watch, Ingentia was the first to win conversion of the licence from Petroleum Prospecting Licence (PPL) 202 to Petroleum Mining Licence (PML) 66. The tenure of the PML is 20 years (June 2025 to June 2045). Only one other company, Multisub, has won a conversion to PML, among the 50 companies that constitute the Marginal Field Class of 2020 to 2022 to have their PPLs converted.
Ajayi went to Ingentia from Asharami Energy, an Upstream subsidiary of the, Sahara Group where she was Managing Director.
