In reminiscence, its paths in the nation’s oil and gas industry, beginning in 1994 with the establishment of Ocean and Oil Services Limited, had been laced with more roses than thorns.
At the outset, the visionaries, Jubril Adewale Tinubu, Omamofe Boyo and Onajite Okoloko, who could be regarded as kindred spirits, had a burning ambition and were not disappointed by any perceived boulder in their way.
Though many industry watchers didn’t anticipate their coming, it wasn’t a case of a bridge too far or a river so deep and wide to cross for these business wizards.
Ocean and Oil Services Limited was established to supply diesel and Low-Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) to various shipping firms and offshore exploration companies in Nigeria.
It was no doubt a humble beginning, as the budding oil company started only with a vessel, MT Carolina, anchored in Bonny Island, Rivers State, to supply diesel and Low-Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) to off-shore companies from the Port-Harcourt, Rivers State refinery.
Interestingly, just six years after its emergence in the nation’s thriving oil market, Ocean and Oil Services Limited began to show flashes of a potentially big player, particularly with the acquisition of six ships. This development shocked its morbid critics, who didn’t give it any chance of survival.
In 2000, Tinubu and his co-travellers on this ambitious journey jolted industry watchers when they expressed interest in acquiring a 30 % controlling interest in the defunct Unipetrol.
The move swiftly responded to the government’s decision to sell its controlling 60% stake in Unipetrol Plc, an integrated downstream oil marketing company.
In hindsight, the show of interest by the partners had come with some mild drama from the least-expected quarter.
Those in the know at the time claimed that a former Managing Director of the defunct Unipetrol had laughed it off as a colossal joke. It was alleged that he thought it was inconceivable that Ocean and Oil Services Limited, an upstart company, would acquire an already top-quoted company on the Lagos Stock Exchange.
But before the eyes of the renowned seasoned technocrat and other nitpickers, the planned acquisition went without a hitch. By 2001, Ocean and Oil Services had increased its shares in Unipetrol to 42%.
The company wrought this magic with impressive support from its foreign technical partners, Compagnia Espanola De Petroleos (CEPSA), the second-largest oil group in Spain.
Again, in 2002, these enterprising and go-getting businessmen fortuitously became the object of global interest when Ocean and Oil Services Limited acquired a 60% stake in Agip Nigeria Plc.
It all began when Agip Petroli International BV of Italy decided to divest from the downstream sector. With their eyes fixed on the future, the business partners, after broad consultations and meetings of minds, bought over the foreign company’s shares and added Agip Nigeria Plc, the company’s
local subsidiary to their portfolio, using an N9.2 billion four-year syndicated loan from a consortium of local and international lenders to finance its purchase.
About a year later, in 2003, the newly acquired companies were merged, resulting in the historic birth of Oando Limited.
That singular audacious move, in the eyes of many players in the industry, spoke to the sense and rhyme in the saying of Henry Ford, an American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company that “ Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.”
Indeed, if anyone had thumped his chest that it would take the partners aeons to break into the international market, he was mistaken! Their success story has defied all imaginable hypotheses, as Oando Plc secured a cross-border listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa in 2005!
Indeed, if you could undertake an anatomy of Oando, which has become like a multi-trunk tree, you would marvel at the tireless efforts of Tinubu and his partners to constantly keep the company one of the most talked about in the energy business, locally and internationally.
