Unuigbe floats new oil firm Petralon

Former First Hydrocarbon Nigeria (FHN) executive, Ahonsi Unuigbe has founded an upstream oil and gas company, Petralon Energy, BusinessDay West Africa Energy has gathered.

 The new company will apparently acquire, develop, and operate assets in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria. It will also take advantage of farm-in opportunities, marginal fields, bid rounds and concessions. 

 It was gathered that Petralon alongside international technical partners have already made an acquisition and will soon be hitting first oil.

 It was gathered that Femi Bajomo, another former FHN and former Shell executive is involved with the company in some non-executive and technical advisory capacity. The company is said to have strong financial backing in excess $70 million and is still in the process of raising more capital. 

Bajomo had a 25 year career with the Shell Group working in Exploration & Production, Economics & Planning, Gas Development and Gas Consultancy in Nigeria, Namibia, London and the Netherlands between 1980 and 2005. He was the managing director of Shell Exploration and Production Namibia and Namibia country chairman between 1999 and 2003. From 2005 to September 2010, he was with the BG Group as vice president, Nigerian Assets. 

Unuigbe has had considerable success at raising capital in the past as he was responsible for the day-to-day management of FHN’s finance function. 

A former executive director/chief financial officer at FHN, Unuigbe was previously Budget and Planning Commissioner for Edo State, where he also served as chairman of the International Donor Financing and Vice Chairman of the State Economic and Strategy Committees, among others.  He has also served as a special assistant to the minister of finance, supporting Nigeria’s successful exit from the London club of creditors. He moved into government from various positions at Citigroup Corporate & Investment Bank (where he was manager, project & corporate finance), Ocean & Oil Holdings Ltd (where he was vice president, investments and financial advisory) and Standard Bank (where he headed both the Project Finance and Government and International Organisations Departments). During this time he was awarded the 2008 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellowship Award and financed over $2 billion of transactions, including trains 3, 4 and 5 of the NLNG Expansion Project.