Indian billionaire brothers Nitin and Chetan Sandesara are building 10 patrol vessels for Nigeria’s navy

A Nigerian oil company tied to Indian oil tycoons Nitin and Chetan Sandesara is building 10 security vessels for Nigeria’s navy at its own shipyard in the Niger Delta, part of a privately funded push to protect the country’s oil and gas infrastructure.

The first of the ships, the 40-meter Kali 3, was built at the Okpai HM Shipyard in Delta State by Sterling Oil Exploration & Energy Production Co., known as SEEPCO, working with the Nigerian Navy. About 200 Nigerians worked on the vessel, including engineers and technicians from the Niger Delta, naval architects, welders and retired military officers, according to the company.

The navy formally took the Kali 3 into service on Aug. 18 at Asemoku Jetty in Delta State, in a ceremony led by the chief of naval staff, Vice Admiral Idi Abbas. A second vessel, the Kali 4, was close to completion and ready for launch at the time, defenceWeb reported. SEEPCO is supplying all 10 ships under a memorandum of agreement with the navy, which provides the crews.

“The protection of Nigeria’s maritime environment and critical energy assets is essential to sustaining economic activity,” Abbas said at the ceremony.

What the ships will do

The Kali 3 has a draft of 2.5 meters, which lets it operate in the shallow creeks and coastal waters of the delta. It can stay at sea for 10 to 12 days, carries two rigid-hull inflatable boats for boarding operations and was built to Bureau Veritas standards.

The navy will use it for surveillance, interdiction, anti-piracy patrols and maritime law enforcement, and to escort crude oil tankers, liquefied natural gas carriers and offshore supply vessels.

Pipeline vandalism, crude theft and piracy have for years cut into Nigeria’s oil output, and the government has increasingly turned to private companies to help pay for security in the delta.

SEEPCO has not disclosed the cost of the vessels.

From fugitives to navy suppliers

The project gives the Sandesaras a new kind of standing in Nigeria, where the brothers built an oil business after leaving India in 2017.

The two, former directors of the drugmaker Sterling Biotech, were accused by Indian investigators of defrauding a group of state-run banks led by Andhra Bank through inflated turnover, fictitious transactions and shell companies. They took Albanian citizenship after leaving India and were declared fugitive economic offenders. They denied cheating their lenders. Nigeria declined to arrest them in 2019, calling the Indian allegations political, Bloomberg reported in 2023.

The case is now largely behind them. On Nov. 19, 2025, India’s Supreme Court accepted a settlement under which the brothers agreed to deposit 51 billion rupees, about $527 million, in return for the quashing of criminal proceedings against them. They paid in December, and the family said the payment brought “closure to all cases” against it and its companies.

In April, the Supreme Court told the Securities and Exchange Board of India to close its own proceedings against Sterling Biotech and the brothers or face action. Lenders have told the court their total dues from the group’s companies come to about 192.8 billion rupees, or roughly $2 billion.

The Nigerian oil business

The brothers entered Nigeria’s oil industry about two decades ago, winning two onshore licences in the delta, and later moved the focus of their business to Lagos. Their companies were pumping about 50,000 barrels of crude a day under contracts with Nigerian National Petroleum Co. in 2023, according to Bloomberg, which said the group was the biggest oil exporter in Nigeria after the international majors.

The ownership on paper is less direct. In Indian court filings in 2022, the brothers described their Sterling oil company as a “very prominent company of Nigeria.” A Nigerian registry of natural resources companies, however, listed Devak Patel, the son of Chetan Sandesara’s brother-in-law, as its owner, Bloomberg reported. Indian media reports this week described SEEPCO as owned by Nitin Sandesara.

SEEPCO is the contractor on Oil Mining Lease 143, which NNPC holds under a production sharing contract. In 2021 the two signed an agreement to develop about 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas on the block, to be processed at a plant in Kwale, Delta State, and to supply a proposed 650-megawatt power station.

In 2019, Nitin Sandesara said taxes paid by the family’s companies made up about 2% of the Nigerian government’s revenue.