By July, Austin Avuru, the pioneer Managing Director and later CEO, Seplat Petroleum Company Plc, will no longer be with the oil company, having enjo
By July, Austin Avuru, the pioneer Managing Director and later CEO, Seplat Petroleum Company Plc, will no longer be with the oil company, having enjoyed the milestones and moments in the oil and gas industry. The Delta State born native will be bidding an industry he has spent the last four decades goodbye for good.
Avuru is however, not bitter or broken. He knows that the future has a way of arriving unannounced and thus, had prepared himself for it. Apart from his 9 to 5 gig at Seplat, Avuru had already invested heavily in BlackBell, operating from a modest building on Admiralty Road, Lekki. The outfit has now moved to a sprawling building on the same street, which has seen an increase in its patronage over the past months. It is one of the concerns with which Avuru hopes to keep busy and ensure he does not go broke in retirement.
A geologist by training, Avuru spent 12 years at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, where he held various positions including Well Site Geologist, Production Seismologist and Reservoir Engineer. In 1992, he joined the Allied Energy Resources in Nigeria, a pioneer deep water operator, where he served as Exploration and Technical Manager. Ten years later, he established Platform Petroleum Ltd and held the role of Managing Director until 2010, when his team worked with Shebah Exploration and Production Company to form SEPLAT in 2009.
As the pioneer MD of Seplat, he is well known to be a reference resource professional in the oil and gas industry was solidified. Under his leadership, the company grew from a little known minnow producing 18kbd in 2010 to a major independent petroleum marketer dually listed on the Lagos and London Stock Exchanges with operated production of over 70kbd crude oil and 280mmscfd of gas.
But his heat does not seem to be hot any longer. Seplat, whose majority shareholder is billionaire Dr ABC Orjiakor, is now in a big debt mess as its fortune has nosedived due largely to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global oil and gas industry. Sources say the board of Seplat has seen a need to restructure and bring in people with fresh and innovative ideas that can help the company to navigate these perilous times and reposition it for local and global competitiveness.
According to CapitalNG, this was the reason the board unanimously chose Roger Brown to replace Avuru and lead the restructuring. In a move that represents a strategic shift in its operations, the change of guards at the company has been done with a view to giving the company a new corporate direction. And, Brown, who, until his elevation as the new MD/CEO, was the Chief Financial Officer, a position he had held since 2013, knows the terrain well enough.
While a former managing director of Diamond Bank, Emeka Onwuka has been appointed the Chief Financial Officer of the company.
