Nigerian tycoon Arthur Eze's Oranto Petroleum loses another block as Uganda rejects permit renewals over lack of work

Arthur Eze's Oranto Petroleum is running out of room to maneuver on the continent. The Nigerian oil junior has now lost permit renewals in South Sudan and Uganda within the same cycle, with governments in both countries citing the same reason: insufficient work carried out on the ground.

In South Sudan, the Ministry of Petroleum in Juba delivered its verdict in late April. Block B3, which Oranto had held for six years, would not be renewed. The ministry accused the company of failing to carry out the mandatory work agreed upon in the contract. That alone would be damaging enough, but the situation has a second dimension. Oranto owes $17 million in wages, back rent, training costs and miscellaneous expenses, and Salva Kiir's government has threatened to go to court to recover the money if it is not paid.

In Uganda, the picture is similar. The government declined to renew the Ngassa Deep permit this year, again citing a lack of work on the site. It also moved to cash the $2.4 million guarantee Oranto had deposited at GTBank when it first entered the country in 2017. That guarantee, meant to backstop Oranto's obligations, is now gone. The situation had been visible for some time. In 2024, Oranto received an extension of the Ugandan permit despite making limited investments, a concession that the government clearly decided it would not extend a second time.

The losses in East Africa are not isolated incidents. They sit inside a broader pattern of permit attrition across the continent that has been building over several years.

In West Africa, Oranto lost its Senegalese permit for the Cayar Offshore Shallow block in September 2025. The country's Minister of Energy, Birame Souleye Diop, had chased up Oranto repeatedly before finally pulling the permit. In Equatorial Guinea, things went further. Chevron moved to exclude Atlas, Oranto's subsidiary, from block 1 after the Nigerian junior repeatedly failed to meet calls for funds from its American partner. The stakes in Equatorial Guinea are significant. The block is tied to the Aseng Gas Monetization Project, which spans fields in both Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon and is intended to supply the EGLNG liquefaction train with a capacity of 7.2 million tonnes. Chevron wanted the issue resolved before making its final investment decision on the project. With Atlas unable to contribute financially, Chevron concluded the exclusion was necessary.

Oranto has not been entirely without positive news during this period. In April 2026, Brazil's Petrobras entered Block 3 in Sao Tome and Principe, allowing Oranto to retain a 15 percent stake in the offshore permit. The arrival of a partner of that caliber brings technical and financial credibility to an asset that would otherwise have faced the same pressure as the permits Oranto has been losing elsewhere. In Liberia, Oranto secured new permits covering blocks LB-15, LB-16, LB-22 and LB-24 in April as well, adding new acreage even as other positions collapsed.

Those bright spots, however, are narrow relative to the scale of the losses. The cumulative picture across South Sudan, Uganda, Senegal and Equatorial Guinea describes a company that has accumulated acreage on the continent without consistently committing the capital and operational resources needed to progress it. The contractual obligations attached to exploration permits, including work programs, minimum expenditure commitments and local content requirements, are not advisory. Governments that feel those obligations are not being met have increasingly been willing to act on it.

Eze built Oranto in the 1990s as a vehicle for acquiring African upstream acreage, at a time when many international majors were deprioritizing frontier markets and local champions could secure blocks with relatively modest commitments. That strategy generated a large portfolio across more than a dozen countries. What it did not always generate was the follow-through investment needed to convert acreage into producing assets. The gap between Oranto's portfolio on paper and its production reality has been a persistent subject of discussion in African oil and gas circles.

The threat of legal action from Juba adds a dimension that goes beyond permit loss. If South Sudan pursues the $17 million through the courts, Oranto faces reputational and financial exposure that could complicate its ability to retain the permits it still holds and to enter new ones. How Eze and his team respond to the South Sudan situation in the coming weeks will signal whether the company intends to meet its continental obligations head-on or continue the pattern that has now cost it positions in four countries.