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Tunde Afolabi's Amni International Petroleum and TotalEnergies took the final investment decision on Wednesday, Sept. 23, to develop the Ima gas field offshore Nigeria, committing to a project that will supply about a third of the gas needed for Nigeria LNG's Train 7.
The field sits across Oil Mining Leases 112 and 117 near Bonny Island and will produce 350 million cubic feet of gas a day. Production is due to start in 2028 and to reach a plateau equivalent to more than 60,000 barrels of oil a day, with the gas piped directly to Nigeria LNG.
Train 7 is the reason the timing matters. The expansion will lift Nigeria LNG's liquefaction capacity to 30 million tonnes a year from 22 million, and the plant needs gas to fill it. Nigeria holds the largest proven gas reserves in Africa and has spent years struggling to keep its own export plant supplied.
TotalEnergies describes Ima as a low-cost resource and part of its integrated gas strategy in Nigeria.
Afolabi is a geologist who built his company from a licence round.
He took a degree in geology at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania in 1973 and a master's at Tulane in New Orleans in 1975, then worked for Texaco in Louisiana from 1974 and Mobil in Dallas from 1979. He founded Amni in Lagos in 1993, when Nigeria was awarding blocks to indigenous companies for the first time, and he still runs it as chairman and chief executive after more than forty years in the industry.
Amni holds gas reserves of about 3.5 trillion cubic feet. Its OML 112 licence, originally awarded as OPL 469 and converted to a 25-year lease in 1998, covers roughly 437 square kilometres, and its Okoro field has been producing since June 2008. The company moved into Ghana in 2014 with a deep-water block called Central Tano.
TotalEnergies has been in the block for two decades. It bought a 40% interest in OML 112 in 2005 through its Nigerian subsidiary, then gave up its rights in the Okoro and Setu fields, which allowed Amni to bring in the British-listed Afren to develop them in 2006. Neither company has disclosed how Ima itself is split.
The decision comes seven months after a difficult one. A Federal High Court in Lagos appointed a court-supervised administrator over key Amni assets in February, in a commercial dispute involving about $15 million. Neither company has said how that matter has progressed.
Afolabi holds the national honour of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic.
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