Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
His Imperial Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, the 51st Ooni of Ife, has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Amaranta Oil & Gas Development Company Limited, a move that places one of Nigeria's most prominent traditional rulers at the helm of a company central to the country's onshore production revival. The appointment, announced on Friday, September 11, 2026, comes as Oil Mining Lease 42, the joint venture asset operated by Neconde Energy and NNPC Exploration and Production Limited in the western Niger Delta, enters a new and more capital-intensive phase of development.
For Amaranta, the choice of Oba Ogunwusi is about more than governance. The company has positioned itself not merely as a financier but as what it describes as an integrated upstream asset development partner, deploying capital alongside specialised personnel to accelerate production and manage risk across the life of the asset. Under a Funding and Technical Services Agreement struck with the joint venture partners, Amaranta has committed financing toward OML 42's development programme over a 15-year horizon, a bet that has already begun to pay off in barrels. In the three years since the agreement became operational, crude output from the asset has roughly tripled to approximately 55,000 barrels of oil per day, according to figures provided by the company. That volume now accounts for roughly five per cent of Nigeria's total crude production, a notable contribution from a single onshore asset in a sector where security challenges and ageing infrastructure have historically weighed on output.
The Ooni brings to the chairmanship a business résumé that predates his ascension to the throne in 2015. Before becoming the traditional ruler of Ile-Ife, he built a career spanning real estate development, engineering, procurement and construction contracts, and infrastructure projects. He is a certified member of the Institute of Directors and a member of the Global Real Estate Institute, credentials that formed the foundation of a business career that has since extended into board and advisory positions across banking, real estate and industrial holdings. His move into the Amaranta chairmanship extends that business profile into the upstream oil and gas sector at a moment when the Nigerian government has been actively courting indigenous capital and alternative financing structures to reverse years of underinvestment in mature and previously stranded assets.
The appointment lands at a pivotal moment for OML 42. The block, which covers about 814 square kilometres, was originally operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria before communal disturbances and security concerns forced a shutdown roughly two decades ago. Production, which peaked at approximately 250,000 barrels per day in 1974, languished for years before the Funding and Technical Services Agreement arrangement with Amaranta brought in the capital and technical capacity needed to restart and scale drilling, workovers and field infrastructure repairs. A recent milestone was the deployment of the Pathfinder 500 drilling rig, the first time it had been used since its acquisition about eight years ago. The rig completed workover operations on two producing wells on OML 42 without any reported health, safety or environmental incident.
The near-term target now is to push OML 42 to 100,000 barrels of oil per day, alongside a parallel push to commercialise the asset's substantial but largely untapped natural gas resources. The gas opportunity is significant. OML 42 holds estimated 2P reserves of approximately 600 million stock tank barrels of crude and 4.3 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to figures shared by the company, a resource base that, if developed, would position the asset as a meaningful contributor not only to Nigeria's crude exports but to its long-discussed ambitions of building out a domestic and export-oriented gas industry. The company has not disclosed a specific timeline for reaching the 100,000-barrel-per-day target, though the pace of the increase over the past three years has been cited by the company as evidence that the goal is within reach on a multi-year horizon rather than a distant one. Gas commercialisation, which typically requires additional midstream infrastructure and offtake arrangements, is expected to represent a longer runway, though the company has flagged it as a strategic priority alongside continued crude growth.
Amaranta's pitch has centred on what it describes as a risk-aligned framework designed to optimise asset lifecycle value for all stakeholders: the joint venture partners, Nigeria, host communities and Amaranta itself as financier. The company has positioned this structure as a template that could be replicated across other underperforming or dormant Nigerian upstream assets as the federal government continues to lean on indigenous and alternative capital providers to hit its production aspirations. Nigeria's crude production has been a persistent point of national concern, with the country regularly falling short of OPEC quotas amid pipeline vandalism, crude theft, and years of underinvestment by international oil companies that have been divesting onshore and shallow-water assets to local operators. Funding and technical services agreements, structures in which a specialised partner provides both capital and operational expertise in exchange for a share of production economics, have emerged as one mechanism the government and indigenous operators have used to try to reverse that trend without depending solely on traditional oil majors or conventional project finance.
The elevation of Oba Ogunwusi to the board chairmanship is being read within the industry as an effort to pair that operational track record with broader stakeholder engagement, as Amaranta enters a phase it has described internally as more capital-intensive and higher-stakes, given the scale of the remaining development programme and the ambitions around gas. People familiar with the company's thinking described the chairmanship as reflecting a desire to combine Amaranta's technical and financial execution capability with governance oversight from a figure whose standing extends well beyond the energy sector. For the joint venture partners, Neconde Energy and NNPC Exploration and Production, the Funding and Technical Services Agreement structure with Amaranta remains central to how OML 42's remaining development programme will be financed and executed over the balance of the 15-year agreement. For Nigeria, the larger opportunity is clear: a better-performing OML 42 will contribute to energy security, economic growth and increased indigenous participation in the upstream sector. The immediate task for Amaranta is to translate the asset's considerable potential into higher production, stronger gas development and sustainable economic value for a nation that has waited too long for its oil wealth to translate into prosperity for its people.
📩 Stone Reporters News | 🌍 stonereportersnews.com
✉️ info@stonereportersnews.com | 📘 Facebook: Stone Reporters News | 🐦 X (Twitter): @StoneReportNew | 📸 Instagram: @stonereportersnews
Add comment
Comments