Nigerian tycoon Olakunle Williams' Tetracore lands power license in Edo State

Nigerian energy entrepreneur Olakunle Williams' Tetracore Energy Group has been granted a power generation and distribution license in Edo State, extending a company built on gas trading into selling electricity in a state where it already supplies the fuel.

The license was issued by the Edo State Ministry of Power to Tetracore Power Company Limited, a subsidiary, after the company met the required regulatory and statutory conditions, the group said in a statement. It did not disclose planned capacity, investment or a timeline for first power.

Oladayo Williams, managing director of the subsidiary, called the grant "an important milestone" and said the company looks forward to working with the state government "to support the State's energy and economic development ambitions."

Gas first, then the power plant

Tetracore has been in Edo for years on the gas side. Its 40 million standard cubic feet a day city gate in the state supplies more than 18 industries, and the company has been building auto-CNG stations there. Nationally, it says it trades more than 90 mmscf/d, the largest gas portfolio in Nigeria, and supports over 300 MW of industrial generation at customers' sites.

The Edo license lets it close the loop. Under Nigeria's 2023 Electricity Act, states can regulate and license generation and distribution within their borders, and Tetracore has moved quickly to use that opening. In May, Nasarawa's new electricity regulator handed the group its first preliminary generation and distribution licenses, presented by Gov. Abdullahi Sule at the state's investment summit. Weeks earlier, Tetracore began generating at its Atakobo independent power plant in Ogun State, delivering 20 MW along about 80 kilometres of 33 kV line to industries around Ijebu Ode, with a path to 100 MW.

The Edo grant follows the same template: gas supply already in place, embedded power added on top, sold directly to factories rather than through the national grid.

A fast-growing group

Williams, 38, a former Deloitte tax consultant, founded Tetracore in 2022. The group now spans gas supply and trading, CNG, small-scale LNG, gas-to-power and mobile refueling, with customers including Dangote Cement's Ibese plant and port operators.

It holds Ghana's first virtual pipeline license and is building a compressed gas mother station in Tema, and says it has invested more than $80 million in West African gas infrastructure.

It has also been collecting credentials. Tetracore's Nigerian operations were certified to ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 in May after a Bureau Veritas audit, and in August the company reported 1 million man-hours without a lost-time injury.

What Edo gets is a licensed generator that already knows its customers. What Tetracore gets is a second state-level power business in four months, in a market where the old model of selling gas to someone else's turbine is giving way to owning the turbine too.