Nigerian oil tycoon Ken Etete built an offshore empire by buying the oil ships he once ran for others

Ken Etete spent more than a decade running floating oil production ships for foreign owners off the coast of Nigeria. In 2019 he started buying them.

That year his company, Century Group, agreed to pay $40 million for one vessel and $15 million for another. Four years later it paid $15 million for a third. Century now owns three floating production, storage and offloading vessels, the ships known as FPSOs that pump, process and store crude at sea, and leases them to Nigerian oil producers.

The Lagos-based group also runs the Kidney Island logistics base in Port Harcourt, operates a 2 million barrel floating storage vessel in the eastern Niger Delta, and has a joint venture with the state oil company, NNPC Ltd., that the oil minister said would add 40,000 barrels a day to Nigeria's output. It says it employs more than 1,000 people.

Etete has built all of this without publishing a set of accounts. He also carries a surname tied to one of the biggest corruption cases in the history of the oil industry.

The accountant from Bayelsa

Etete is from Bayelsa State, the Ijaw heartland of the Niger Delta. He took his A-levels in Port Harcourt and studied accounting at the University of Port Harcourt. While he was still a student, he told BusinessDay in 2020, he bought petroleum products and resold them to construction companies.

After graduating in the 1990s, he went to work for Willbros, the American pipeline contractor that was then one of the largest service companies in the Niger Delta. He later joined Bluewater, the Dutch FPSO company, where he worked on selling and running floating production projects.

"I have always wanted to provide value, identify problems and proffer solutions," he said in the BusinessDay interview.

Century says it was founded in 2002. By the end of 2007, Etete was running it.

Running other people's ships

His break came through Bumi Armada, the Malaysian vessel owner. Under contracts awarded in 2007, Century and Bumi Armada formed a joint venture to run the Armada Perkasa, an FPSO on the Okoro and Setu fields operated by Amni International and Afren. The contracts took effect in July 2008. A year later, Century began operating the Armada Perdana on the Oyo field for CAMAC Energy and Eni.

The timing helped. In 2010 Nigeria passed a local content law that forced oil companies to hand more work to Nigerian firms. Etete called the law "preparation meeting opportunity" for a company that had already built Nigerian crews.

The contracts piled up. Century says it beat Italy's Saipem in 2009 for an FPSO job for the Nigerian Petroleum Development Co. and took over the project in 2010. It signed a deal with Shell to run Kidney Island, an abandoned logistics base in Port Harcourt that its unit Century Ports & Terminals still operates. It took on a production unit and storage vessel for Oriental Energy in 2010 and the Jones Creek flow station for a unit of the state oil company in 2012. In the middle of the decade it began running the Front Puffin FPSO on the Aje field off Lagos for Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum.

Century also tried owning oil. In 2010 its exploration arm took a stake in the Atala marginal field with Bayelsa Oil Co. Nigeria's regulator revoked the Atala licence in 2020 and moved to give it to another company. Billionaires.Africa found no oil block currently held by Century in the regulator's public records.

The $40 million ship

The buying began in September 2019. Century agreed to pay Bumi Armada $40 million for the Armada Perdana, the ship it had been running for a decade.

Bumi Armada's disclosure showed how Etete paid for it. Century put down $5.5 million. Another $11.6 million was offset against money Bumi Armada already owed Century for its operating work. A further $5 million was due on delivery or first oil, and the remaining $17.9 million within two years of first oil. Bumi Armada kept a mortgage over the vessel until it was paid off.

Century renamed it Tamara Tokoni. In 2022 General Hydrocarbons Ltd. hired it for the Oyo field, and in May 2025 it loaded the first cargo of Conoil Producing's new Obodo crude.

Around the same time, Century bought the Front Puffin from Rubicon Offshore International for $15 million and renamed it Tamara Nanaye. It produced on the Aje field until November 2022.

In July 2023 BW Offshore of Norway sold the Sendje Berge, a larger FPSO that had worked off Nigeria for years, for $15 million. BW named the buyer only as "a local FPSO owner and operator." Industry publications identified it as Century.

That same year Century took on the operation of the ELI Akaso, a floating storage vessel that holds 2 million barrels. Energy Link Infrastructure built it so producers in onshore OML 18 could ship crude when the Nembe Creek Trunk Line, a pipeline often shut by attacks and theft, was down.

The second-hand ships gave Century something few local rivals had. An FPSO lets a producer develop a field without building a platform or a pipeline to shore. As international oil majors sold Nigerian assets to local companies, those buyers needed floating units, and most of the ships off Nigeria belonged to foreign firms such as Bumi Armada, BW Offshore and SBM Offshore.

The Etete name

Etete shares a surname with Dan Etete, Nigeria's oil minister from 1995 to 1998 under military ruler Sani Abacha. In 1998 Dan Etete awarded the offshore block OPL 245 to Malabu Oil & Gas, a company prosecutors in Italy and Nigeria said he secretly controlled. In 2011 Shell and Eni paid $1.3 billion for the block. Prosecutors alleged that much of the money flowed through Malabu to politicians and middlemen.

The exact relationship between the two men is unclear. Italian prosecutors, in a memo filed in the Milan case against Shell, Eni and several executives, described Ken Etete as Dan Etete's son. Kaieteur News in Guyana and the Nigerian outlet The Valuechain have called him a nephew. The Guardian of Nigeria called him a relative.

The Milan memo alleged that Rocky Top Resources, a company Dan Etete controlled, sent $36,018,900 of the OPL 245 money to Peredoaya City, a company prosecutors linked to Ken Etete. That claim was never tested in court against him. He was not charged in Italy or in Nigeria, where the anti-graft agency charged Malabu, Rocky Top and others with money laundering.

The case against the oil companies collapsed. A Milan court acquitted every defendant in March 2021, prosecutors dropped their appeal in 2022, and Nigeria abandoned its civil suit against Shell and Eni in London in November 2023. In a separate case, a French court convicted Dan Etete of money laundering in 2007.

A cargo stuck at sea

The Tamara Tokoni became the stage for a separate fight in January 2025. A Nigerian court detained a crude cargo stored on the ship after First Bank of Nigeria sought to recover $225.8 million it says General Hydrocarbons owes it. The Court of Appeal ordered the oil sold in September 2025. In July 2026 the Supreme Court reversed that and ordered the crude released to General Hydrocarbons. Century was not a party to the case.

Guyana and a worker's pay

Century's other legal troubles have been smaller. In April 2023 Nigeria's National Industrial Court ordered Century and Bumi Armada to pay 25 million naira jointly to a worker injured on the Armada Perdana in 2013.

Its push abroad has been uneven. In 2017 it set up Century Tamara Energy Services in Guyana to sell its FPSO crews into the oil boom led by Exxon Mobil. A year later its country manager told Stabroek News it had no contracts. In 2023 drivers working for a Century affiliate in Guyana told Kaieteur News the company had deducted their national insurance contributions without passing them on to the state. The company's human resources department said it was unaware of the problem.

What comes next

Etete's biggest bet now runs through the government. In October 2024 Oil Minister Heineken Lokpobiri visited the yard where the Tamara Nanaye was being upgraded under a joint venture between NNPC and Century, with West Africa Exploration and Production and Enserv. The ship was being prepared for the Kalaekule field in OML 72, which NNPC owns with Aliko Dangote's oil company and First E&P. Lokpobiri said the project would add 40,000 barrels a day.

"This fits into the government philosophy in the immediate medium term to increase production," Etete said during the visit.

Kalaekule reached first oil in December 2025 and was pumping about 4,500 barrels a day by April 2026, S&P Global reported. The reports did not say which vessel was handling the output. The Tamara Tokoni was advertised for redeployment in November 2025, suggesting it was between contracts.

Etete has spent the past year raising his profile. Century was a gold partner at African Energy Week in Cape Town in 2025 and its FPSO partner in 2026, when it said it was in talks with South African partners. In December 2025, at an Africa and Gulf meeting in Doha, he argued that Gulf capital and African resources could reshape global energy.

The group lists seven subsidiaries: Century Energy Services, Century Exploration & Production, Century Ports & Terminals, Century Data Integrated Services, Century Real Estate & Logistics, Elmina Petroleum and Global Manning Resources. It has not said who owns them. In 2024 it funded the Ken Etete Library at the Nigerian University of Technology and Management in Lagos, and it sponsors the Bayelsa governor's Prosperity Cup football tournament.