Billionaire Tony Elumelu's Heirs Energies commissions a digital nerve centre to run Nigeria's OML 17 oilfield from a single screen

Tony Elumelu's Heirs Energies has commissioned an Integrated Operations Monitoring Centre at its OML 17 asset in Rivers State, bringing together production data, security surveillance, facility performance and hydrocarbon evacuation monitoring into a single digital platform designed to sharpen decision-making and improve operational efficiency across one of Nigeria's largest onshore oilfields.

The centre, built in collaboration with Redtech, the technology company within the Heirs Holdings group, went live on June 29, 2026. It effectively serves as the digital nerve centre of the OML 17 Joint Venture, giving operators a unified real-time view of assets that previously required separate systems, separate teams and separate response chains to monitor and manage.

Osa Igiehon, Chief Executive Officer of Heirs Energies, said the centre represents the company's conviction that the next phase of upstream oil and gas productivity will be driven by data rather than headcount. "The future of upstream operations will be driven by data, technology and intelligent decision-making. The Integrated Operations Monitoring Centre provides us with a real-time operational view of our assets, enabling quicker decisions, improved collaboration and enhanced operational efficiency," he said.

The practical significance of commissioning a facility like this at OML 17 goes beyond the technology itself. The field, which Heirs Energies took over as operator from Shell in 2021, was producing approximately 24,000 barrels of oil per day when the handover happened. It now produces more than 50,000 barrels per day. Gas production has expanded to between 120 and 135 million standard cubic feet per day. The field contributes approximately 5 percent of Nigeria's total crude oil production and 5 percent of its domestic gas supply. Managing an asset of that scale with the reliability and precision that investors and the NNPC joint venture structure demand requires operational infrastructure that can absorb and process information faster than any human system working in isolation can do.

That is what the new centre provides. Security is one of the most immediate practical benefits. OML 17 covers remote onshore territory in Rivers State, a region where pipeline vandalism and crude theft have historically cost Nigeria billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The centre's intruder detection and surveillance system enables real-time monitoring and early threat identification across critical facilities and infrastructure, reducing the window between a threat being initiated and a response being deployed.

Emmanuel Ojo, Managing Director and CEO of Redtech, said the project illustrates what technology built specifically for African energy operations can achieve when it is developed by people who understand the operating environment. "At Redtech, we believe technology should simplify operations, improve decision-making and create measurable business value. The IOMC demonstrates what is possible when digital innovation is applied to industrial operations. Working alongside Heirs Energies, we have delivered a platform that enables connected operations, intelligent monitoring and faster operational response," he said.

Redtech operates two business lines under the Heirs Holdings umbrella: RedPay, a payment solutions platform, and SITCOM, its integrated energy technology product for upstream oil and gas operators. The OML 17 IOMC is built on the SITCOM platform, making the Heirs Holdings ecosystem itself the delivery mechanism for a capability that a third-party technology vendor might have taken years longer to develop and deploy on a field of OML 17's complexity.

Elumelu built Heirs Holdings as a pan-African investment group with strategic stakes across financial services, energy, hospitality and real estate. His decision to structure the group with its own internal technology company rather than outsourcing digital transformation to external providers is visible in the OML 17 commissioning. Heirs Energies did not hire a foreign technology consultancy to build its operations centre. It used a company it already owns, staffed by Nigerians, building on infrastructure designed for the Nigerian operating environment.

The commission opens the door to future capabilities the joint venture has flagged as priorities, including predictive analytics, remote operations and artificial intelligence-enabled decision support. None of those are live yet, but the centre provides the data infrastructure on which they can eventually be built.