Oando Plans $750 Million Drilling Campaign to Triple Output as Global Crisis Boosts West African Oil Appeal

For decades, Nigeria’s oil industry has been dominated by international majors such as Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil, which controlled key assets, led production activities and played central roles in shaping the sector. 

That era is over. Today, indigenous producers pump more than half of Nigeria's daily crude output, and no single company embodies that historic reversal better than Oando Plc. 

This week, Oando's chief executive Wale Tinubu confirmed what the company's financial trajectory had already been signalling: a massive bet on Nigeria's moment. Speaking to Reuters in London, Tinubu disclosed that Oando is seeking to raise up to $750 million to fund a drilling campaign targeting as many as 100 wells. 

If it succeeds, the programme could triple the company's current output from a base that has itself already expanded significantly. It would rank as one of the most ambitious drilling pushes by an indigenous African energy company in recent history. 

The timing is not accidental. The world is in an energy crisis. In late February 2026, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz following the escalation of the US-Israel-Iran conflict, disrupting the flow of roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply. Oil prices surged past $100 per barrel. 

Asian buyers who had relied on Gulf crude suddenly needed alternatives. They turned to West Africa  and specifically to Nigeria. According to Tinubu, cargoes of Nigerian crude have already begun shifting eastward, filling the gap that Gulf oil can no longer supply. 

For Oando and Nigerian producers more broadly, this is both a pricing opportunity and a funding window. "We are pushing very, very hard towards getting the financing that we need to do an extensive drilling campaign," Tinubu said. He acknowledged that in the past, investors had been reluctant to back African onshore oil, viewing the continent as an unsafe environment. 

The geopolitics of 2026 have changed that calculus. "Africa is very, very peaceful compared to these regions," he said, referring to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where Russia's war in Ukraine continues to grind on. Oando's current position makes the ambition credible. 

The company is a structurally different entity from what it was even two years ago. In August 2024, Oando completed its acquisition of the Nigerian Agip Oil Company from Italy's Eni for $783 million one of the largest upstream transactions in recent Nigerian history. 

That deal doubled Oando's working interest in Oil Mining Leases 60 to 63 from 20 percent to 40 percent, and roughly doubled its proven and probable reserves to approximately one billion barrels of oil equivalent. It gave the company a much larger drilling inventory to work with. 

The financial results following that acquisition have been striking. By the first nine months of 2025, Oando had posted a 59 percent jump in production and a 164 percent rise in profit after tax, reaching N210 billion. The company's restated 2024 profit came in at N220 billion, more than three times the 2023 figure, on revenue of N4.12 trillion. 

These are not the numbers of a company in survival mode  they are the numbers of a company preparing to scale. The $750 million drilling campaign sits within a broader capital-raising infrastructure. 

In August 2025, Oando's board signed off on a multi-instrument issuance programme of up to $1.5 billion, providing the structural framework for the kind of large-scale fundraising that a 100-well drilling campaign demands. 

Tinubu indicated the company is in active discussions with a range of funders, including the African Export-Import Bank, the African Finance Corporation, and major oil trading houses such as Vitol, Trafigura, Glencore, and Mercuria. 

European banks have largely exited African hydrocarbons due to climate-related pressure, but Gulf banks and private equity funds have stepped in to fill the gap, Tinubu noted. The CEO also made a broader argument that goes beyond Oando's own balance sheet.

Africa, he argued, needs to stop depending on European lenders who are retreating from the sector on environmental grounds, and instead pool its own capital  through pension funds and domestic financial institutions  to finance large-scale energy development. 

It is a vision of African energy sovereignty that aligns with the broader shift in Nigeria's upstream sector, where indigenous producers now account for more than half of national oil output. Nigeria's enabling environment has also improved. 

Tinubu pointed specifically to the landmark 2021 Petroleum Industry Act as a regulatory overhaul that has materially improved investor confidence. President Bola Tinubu's subsequent currency and fuel subsidy reforms have further steadied the macroeconomic picture. 

The 650,000 barrel-per-day Dangote Refinery — now a strategic energy supplier to countries across Africa whose own supply chains are disrupted  sits as evidence of how much investable value exists within Nigeria's resource base. 

There are complications. Oando has flagged recurring delays in filing audited financial statements with the Nigerian Exchange, drawing criticism from regulators and market analysts who track corporate governance closely. Tinubu acknowledged the issue and said the company is working to streamline its financials to avoid further extensions. 

Getting the drilling campaign funded while addressing its reporting obligations represents the operational balancing act that will define Oando's 2026. Longer term, the CEO flagged plans to exploit Oando's gas production for petrochemicals and fertilizers, moving the company further up the value chain beyond crude production. 

That ambition, combined with recent expansion into Angola and exploratory discussions in Ghana and Ivory Coast, sketches the outline of an indigenous pan-African energy company that is still in the early stages of what it intends to become. 

For Nigeria, the implications extend beyond Oando's own fortunes. When indigenous producers succeed, the value of oil stays onshore. It funds local tax revenues, creates local employment, and builds the kind of institutional capacity that decades of majority-foreign ownership never produced. Oando's $750 million drilling push is, in that sense, a story about more than oil wells.