By The crude comes out of the Niger Delta, in the South South. The licences over Nigeria's oil, wherever a Nigerian owner's name and origin can be documented at all, sit heaviest in South West hands. A SecretsReporters review of the concession register kept by the upstream petroleum regulator counts 266 licences in force: 96 petroleum prospecting licences, 61 petroleum mining leases, 14 oil prospecting licences and 95 oil mining leases. Behind 55 of those licences stands an identified Nigerian private owner. Behind 40 of the 55 does any biography, company record or published profile state where that owner comes from, and on that documented count the producing region does not lead. It comes second.
The rest of the register sits outside private hands altogether. The national oil company and state government vehicles hold 101 licences. International oil companies and other foreign holders hold 25. Four sit with listed companies whose shareholdings are dispersed, and 14 sit in mixed consortia where control is shared or unresolved. The 126 licences in state and foreign hands carry no ethnic attribution by design, because there is no individual owner to attribute. For 67 further licences, held through companies, no founder or controlling individual is publicly established at all. Counted strictly on documented origin, the 40 licences divide by region as follows: South West 19, South South 7, South East 6, North East 5, North West 2 and North Central 1. By tribe the division runs: Yoruba 19, Igbo 7, Kalabari 3, Fulani 3, Hausa-Kanuri 3, Ika 2, Igala 1, Anioma 1 and Hausa 1.
The Adenuga Blocks
Six of the South West's 19 belong to one man. Mike Adenuga's Continental Oil and Gas Company, Conog, holds OML 59 and OML 150 outright. His Conoil Producing holds OML 103 and OML 153 outright, holds 60 per cent of OML 136 against TotalEnergies' 40 per cent, and holds 60 per cent of the deep-offshore OPL 257, which it also operates. No other owner in the country holds more than three of the counted licences.
The Rest of the South West
Tunde Afolabi's Amni International Petroleum holds 60 per cent of OML 112, the Okoro and Setu fields, and 60 per cent of OML 117, operating both. Tunde Folawiyo's Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum holds 69 per cent of OML 113 and operates the Aje field. Taiwo Afolabi's Sifax Oil and Gas Company holds the whole of two deep-offshore licences from the last licensing round, PPL 300 and PPL 304. Adebisi Adebutu's R28 Holdings holds the whole of two more from the same round, PPL 2007 and PPL 3011. Abdulkabir Adisa Aliu's Matrix Energy holds 90 per cent of PPL 211, the Atamba field, and his Matrix Energy E&P holds 60 per cent of OPL 2010. Anthony Adegbulugbe's Green Energy International holds 60 per cent of PML 11, the Otakikpo field, and operates it. Olalekan Akinyanmi's Lekoil operates OPL 276 on a 45 per cent holding, level with Newcross Petroleum as the licence's largest named private holder. Abdulwasiu Sowami stands behind PPL 203 through Ardova Plc's 53.05 per cent of the licence holder, Ardogreen Energy. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello is the largest shareholder of All Grace Energy, which holds 60 per cent of PML 7, the Ubima field. Every one of the South West's counted owners is Yoruba.
The Delta's Counted Names
The South South's seven are substantial names, and they are still outnumbered. The Lulu-Briggs family of Kalabari stands behind three of them. Platform Petroleum, chaired by Dumo Lulu-Briggs, holds 60 per cent of PML 18, the Egbaoma field, and its joint venture vehicle holds 60 per cent of PPL 221, the Hely Creek field. Moni Pulo, founded by the late O. B. Lulu-Briggs, holds 60 per cent of OML 114. Winifred Akpani, founder of Northwest Petroleum and Gas, holds PPL 229 through her company's 69.6 per cent of the Ede field vehicle; Akpani is Anioma. Tony Elumelu's Tenoil holds PML 19, the Ata and Inanga fields, outright; Elumelu is Igbo. Nduka Obaigbena's General Hydrocarbons holds OML 120 and OML 121 outright; Obaigbena is Ika. These are the Delta's own, holding licences in their own region, and the whole of their documented tally is twelve short of the South West's.
The Joint Ventures
The Delta's largest fields do not appear in its column at all, and the reason is structural. They sit in joint ventures where the national oil company holds the majority. OML 29 stands 55 to 45 between NNPC and Aiteo Eastern E&P, which operates it. OML 17 stands 55 to 45 between NNPC and Heirs Energies. OML 42 and OML 30 stand 55 to 45 between NNPC's exploration and production arm and Neconde Energy and Shoreline Natural Resources respectively. OML 55 stands 60 to 40 between NNPC and Belemaoil. The private partners are named men with documented origins: Benedict Peters of Aiteo and Tein Jack-Rich of Belemaoil are themselves Delta men, and Heirs Energies is Tony Elumelu's, Neconde is Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi's and Shoreline is Kola Karim's. They operate fields, or hold large minority positions in them, inside ventures the state controls, so under any honest count the licences belong to no region and no tribe. Jack-Rich is a Kalabari man of Rivers State, and the lease his company partners in still cannot be entered in the South South's column. Minority paper counts for nothing either: T. Y. Danjuma's South Atlantic Petroleum holds between 10 and 20 per cent across PPL 261, PPL 2000, PPL 2001, PML 2, PML 3 and PML 4, and Folorunso Alakija's Famfa Oil holds 60 per cent of the equity of the Chevron-operated Agbami production sharing contract, PPL 2003 and PML 52, without operating or controlling it.
The Rest of the Country
Muhammadu Indimi's Oriental group holds three of the North East's five: 88 per cent of PML 15, the Okwok field, through Oriental Okwok; the whole of PML 16, the Ebok field; and the whole of OML 115. Indimi is Hausa-Kanuri. Mahmud Tukur's Ashgrove holds the whole of PML 1, the Ofa field, and Abdulmumini Yakubu Maishanu, owner of the AYM Shafa group, stands behind PPL 255, the Akamba and Mfoniso field; both men are Fulani. Arthur Eze holds two of the South East's six, the whole of OPL 293 through Oranto Petroleum and the whole of OML 109 through Atlas Petroleum. ABC Orjiako's First Aries Petroleum holds the whole of PPL 273, and Catherine Uju Ifejika's Brittania-U holds the whole of PML 6, the Ajapa field. Emeka Offor stands behind PPL 209, the Abiala field, held by Elcrest Exploration and Production; his holding is indirect, running through his Chrome Group and its Starcrest arm, and it is counted on that documented chain alone. The late Emmanuel Egbogah's Emerald Energy Resources holds 54 per cent of OML 141. Every South East owner counted is Igbo. The North West has two: Auwalu Abdullahi Rano's A. A. Rano Nigeria, which holds 55 per cent of PPL 245, the Oloye field, Rano being Fulani; and the late Aminu Alhassan Dantata's Express Petroleum, which holds 39 per cent of OPL 227 and operates it as the largest named private holder, Dantata having been Hausa. The North Central has one. Aisha Achimugu's Oceangate Engineering Oil and Gas holds the whole of PPL 235, the Udara field; Achimugu is Igala, of Kogi State. Five further licences stand just outside the count, because the owner's state is documented while his tribe is nowhere stated: Abdulrazaq Isa Kutepa, co-founder and chairman of Waltersmith Petroman, holds PPL 243 and 70 per cent of PML 5, the Ibigwe field, his state being Kogi; Uduimo Justus Itsueli's Dubri Oil holds OML 96, his state being Edo; Ahonsi Unuigbe's Petralon 54 holds the whole of PPL 259, the Dawes Island field, his state being Edo; Onajite Okoloko's Midwestern Oil and Gas holds 70 per cent of PML 22, the Umusadege field, his state being Delta; and Ibrahim Bunu's Optimum Petroleum holds 60 per cent of OPL 310, his state being Borno. Counted by state of origin alone, the South South would stand at ten, the North East and the South East at six each and the North Central at three, and the South West would still lead by a distance.
Five licences sit inside the Sahara group: OPL 228, OML 148 through its Enageed subsidiary, PPL 260, PPL 270 and PPL 271. The group's founders are publicly known as individuals, Tonye Cole among them, but no controlling beneficial owner of its upstream holding companies is publicly documented, so none of the five can be attributed to any individual or any tribe. GEC Petroleum operates the producing OML 149 and OML 151 with no documented individual owner. Damas Petrochemicals holds OML 110, the old Cavendish lease, on the same terms. Behind nine further private licences an owner is named, but no published record states where he comes from: Ademola Adeyemi-Bero's First Exploration and Petroleum Development holds the whole of PPL 2003 and PPL 2006; Festus Fadeyi's Pan Ocean holds OML 147 and his Newcross Petroleum holds 90 per cent of OML 152; Toyin Olagunju's Anatolia Energy holds the whole of PPL 204, the Okiori field; Adebowale Olujimi's Emadeb Energy holds the whole of PPL 236, the Ibom field; Dada Thomas's Frontier Oil holds 60 per cent of PML 10, the Uquo field; Ufoma Immanuel's Chappal Energies holds 53.85 per cent of OML 128; and Olaniyi Olumide's Sunlink Petroleum holds 60 per cent of OML 144. The newest acreage in the country is the least transparent of all: most winners of the last licensing round, Panout, Biswal, Applefield, Hakilat and Broron among them, hold their licences through companies with no public owner record at all.
The documented tally is therefore a map of one segment of the industry: the sole-risk and majority-held onshore and shallow-water licences, where individual Nigerian ownership is a matter of public record. The deepwater and joint venture segments, which hold most of the country's reserves and production, sit with the state and the international companies. The region that produces the oil holds the smaller documented share of it, its biggest fields parked in state-majority ventures that enter no region's column, while the largest counted holding of all belongs to one South West owner.
Follow Secrets Reporters on WhatsApp: join the channel for every exclusive the moment it publishes.
