Oando Plc emerges Nigeria’s first IOC with footprint in Sao Tome and Principe

Oando Plc, a Nigerian based oil and gas exploration company has now attained the status of Nigeria’s first indigenous International Oil Company (IOC) with its operations outside the shores of Nigeria, around the Sao Tome and Principe Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

With over 200 wells in production, nine flow stations and its own export terminal, Brass, Oando has now emerged the first indigenous company to elevate to the status of a major IOC.

A leading African exploration and production company, with world-class operations, Oando prides itself as being at the cutting edge of Africa’s upstream sector, with significant investments in a robust portfolio of oil and gas fields, as well as participating interests in onshore and offshore producing assets.

Its asset base covers exploration, development, and production for both oil and gas and holds interests in over 16 licenses for the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas assets located onshore, swamp, and offshore.

It has a Certified Professional Reserves Report (CPR) from D&M, the second largest in the world, which has also been auditing ENI/NAOC, Chevron, Shell and other oil Majors for decades.

And with the CPR indicating Gross Recoverable 2p reserves on original 20 per cent Certificate of Proficiency (CoP) stake and new NAOC 20 per cent stake Net Present Value (NPV), (10 per cent is $2 billion respectively), total value of the company has now hit $4 billion, that is, before deduction of acquisition debt of the newly acquired company plus legacy debt.

And because of its United States dollar earnings and taking into account inflation differential between US, which is 3 per cent against Nigeria’s over 30 per cent, devaluation is calculated to be 27 per cent this year.

The Nigerian company with two power plants of 500MW, that is, Kwale 1 and 2, comprising three large gas plants, now has dedicated gas line to Eleme Petrochemicals emerging as main supplier there as well as the ownership of a dedicated gas pipeline to LNG.

Today, Oando is the largest supplier of gas to the Eleme Petrochemicals. The issue of insecurity hobbling its activities, aside, Oando’s peak production was 100,000 barrels a day last year and 1.5 billion scf in the case of gas.

For Oando, it’s not always about the money, but one of the key things comsidered is the impact that the company can have and about the legacy of being able to build a world-class company and opening the door for others.

Oando has for years, delivered sustainable value to its stakeholders as it continually grows its reserves by harnessing the optimum potential from its existing range of oil and gas resources, while also acquiring near-term producing assets from international oil companies.

The release of the company’s 2023 financial results on May 31, 2024, revealed a significant turnaround with a pre-tax profit of N104.1 billion compared to a pre-tax loss of N61.8 billion in 2022.

This rally strengthened after the company announced that the federal government approved its 100 per cent acquisition of NAOC, pushing the share price to a five-year high of N47.85 and a year-to-date gain of 371.5 per cent; ranking it as the second-best performing stock on the NGX at the time.

Recently commenting on the enviable results, Wale Tinubu, said: “Despite persistent pipeline vandalism across the Niger Delta, which continues to dampen crude production, we achieved a profit after tax of N74.7 billion in 2023.

“ This was largely driven by increased trading volumes from our strategic global partnerships and net foreign exchange gains on the group’s foreign currency-denominated assets, contrasting with losses on our foreign currency-denominated liabilities.”