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Nigerian billionaire Emeka Okwuosa has signed an agreement in Libreville to develop hydrocarbon reserves in two Gabonese blocks, his first move into Central Africa and a return to a country he worked in as a young engineer.
Oilserv Limited, Okwuosa's company, signed the memorandum with Clotaire Kondja, Gabon's minister of petroleum and gas. It covers the DEF-3 and D4-5 blocks, and commits the company to building the gas transportation, compression and treatment infrastructure needed to move and process what comes out of them. Thermal power generation is the intended use, with industrial development behind it.
Gabon's gas market is projected to reach $2.12 billion by 2031.
The timing is what makes it notable. Oilserv completed construction of its 303-kilometre section of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline in July, finishing the largest single piece of energy infrastructure Nigeria has attempted, and Okwuosa has gone looking for the next market within two months.
Gabon is not new ground for him.
Okwuosa spent more than a decade at Schlumberger before he owned anything, working as a field engineer and then a technical manager across Europe, North Africa, West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. The countries on that list include France, Scotland, Libya, Mauritania, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Angola, Indonesia and Gabon.
He went back this week as the man who owns the contractor.
Okwuosa was born in Oraifite in Anambra State in August 1961, the third of four children of a schoolteacher, and went to the Community Boys Secondary School in the same town. He graduated from the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, in 1982 with a degree in electronics and electrical engineering, and joined Schlumberger afterwards.
He came home in 1994 intending to build Nigerian capacity in oilfield services. Oilserv had been incorporated in 1992 and began operating in 1995, and it worked almost exclusively for Shell Nigeria for its first five years before taking on the other international companies and Nigeria LNG.
What it has built since is substantial. By the company's own count, Oilserv has completed 19 major pipeline projects covering more than 930 kilometres, carried out 76 pipeline leak repairs, constructed 28 above-ground facilities and performed 18 major horizontal directional drilling operations.
That last technique is why Gabon wanted it. Horizontal directional drilling bores beneath an obstacle to pull a pipeline through without disturbing the surface, and Oilserv used it to take the AKK line under the River Niger. The full pipeline runs 614 kilometres at a cost of about $2.8 billion, and it is the first phase of a planned line meant to carry gas from southern Nigeria to the industrial north and eventually toward Morocco and Europe.
Oilserv also built the Obiafu-Obrikom-Oben line that moves gas out of the eastern Niger Delta.
Gabon has reasons to prefer an African contractor. Its state oil company pre-empted Carlyle's sale of Assala Energy to France's Maurel & Prom in 2023, buying the 45,000 barrel-a-day assets itself for around $1 billion with $800 million in financing from the trader Gunvor. The move unsettled the industry and Libreville has pushed energy sovereignty since.
Officials told Oilserv during negotiations that they wanted to learn from Nigeria's history of managing oil and gas.
Kondja called the partnership an opportunity to strengthen cooperation and open new business across the continent, and asked for regional partners capable of turning Africa's natural resources into lasting economic value. He also called for more flexible policies across Africa, particularly to address skills shortages and capital flight.
Okwuosa said the agreement places Oilserv at the intersection of resource development, energy infrastructure, gas monetisation and national energy security.
He runs a group rather than a single company. Alongside Oilserv sit Frazimex Engineering, FrazOil Exploration and Production, FrazPower, Crown Energy Resources and Ekcel Farms, and the group is developing a quarry at Old Netim in Cross River State.
He built a 27-bed hospital in Oraifite in 2022, equipped for open heart surgery and kidney transplants, and treats patients there who cannot pay.
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