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Email: info@sankofaenergy.com
Management Team
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CEO
Has about 15 years’ Experience which spans in Finance, Risk management, Quality Assurance, Business Development and Oil and gas which he gained both within and outside Nigeria.
He began his career with Oasis financial services UK where he worked as financial analysis. He also worked as a consultant at Enteq Consulting Limited, establishing alternative energy tools that specialize in ethanol to energy solutions for power generations. He was also the Head of LPG in MRS oil and gas, and Commercial Director at Corlay Cameroun. Developed requirements for automated data documentation systems which replaced paper-based approaches to recording accounting changes notices and registers in all MRS major Oil and Gas projects. Developed a dashboard system for improving project performance by monitoring and predicting Competitive change growth trends as well as comparing change activities against historical hot spots.
Executive Director
Ifeanyi Ezuka joined Sankofa in 2018. He has 17 years’ experience in the upstream oil and gas industry with various technical and senior positions. His experience spans through leadership, management, commercial, technical and operations aspects of the upstream oil and gas industry.
He has led and participated extensively in Subsurface, Field Development and Production Operations activities while serving in various capacities in currently responsible for all operational and technical functions in Neconde , Schlumberger, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Afren Plc.
CFO
Les Blair has deep and broad-based experience in the oil and gas industry, especially in West Africa, having been one the first members of the management team that launched Addax Petroleum Nigeria Limited (“Addax”) in 1998 with the acquisition of the Ashland Oil assets. He is recognised as one of the most capable and knowledgeable oil and gas executives working in Nigeria.
In ten years with Addax, production was increased from 5,000 bopd to over 130,000 bopd and reserves were increased six-fold prior to the sale of the company to Sinopec in 2009 for circa US$ 7.9 billion, this from an initial investment of US$ 100 million.
During this period Addax drilled over 150 wells onshore and offshore, developed the Okwori/Nda Fields, built and installed three FPSOs and raised over US$ 4 billion in debt and also floated the company on the Canadian Stock Exchange in 2007.
In 2010 he was a founder of Eland Oil & Gas plc (“Eland”) which together with the Chrome Group acquired, via Elcrest Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited (“Elcrest”), a 45% equity position in OML 40 from The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (“SPDC”)/Total E&P Nigeria Limited (“Total”)/Nigerian Agip Oil Company (“NAOC”) in August 2012 and served as Managing Director of Elcrest until 2014 and then as an advisor until the company was sold to Seplat Petroleum in December 2019 for circa US$ 500 million.
Eland floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2012 raising over US$ 200 million.
Les graduated from Aberdeen University in Scotland and started in the industry directly from university initially in Aberdeen, and worked in various locations including Spain, Egypt and Libya before moving to Vietnam to head British Gas Exploration & Production operations there, then to India and Nigeria.
ED Corporate Development
Pricilla Thorpe has over 28 years’ experience advising international and local clients on various aspects of the Nigerian energy sector. She has a wide range of experience, traversing oil, gas, power, project finance, infrastructure projects, corporate/commercial law, and mergers and acquisitions.
Pricilla is nationally, regionally, and internationally recognised as an authority and expert on Nigerian energy Value Chain Management.
Priscilla was the former MD of MRS oil Nigeria Plc.
Technical Director
Hussein brings on board fifteen years’ experience in oil and gas operations, project management and business development.
He is a qualified engineer with a BSc in Chemical Engineering from Christian Brothers University In Tennessee and an MSc in Major Programme Management from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
He started his oil field career in 2004 as a project engineer with Conoco Philips in Houston, Tx, before moving on to play an integral part of the Afren-Oriental Energy Joint Venture project team, responsible for delivering the challenging 30,000 BOPD Ebok field reservoirs from exploration through to production in a record time of 18 months on a FastTrack schedule. Hussein worked as a field engineer overseeing the facilities construction and later moved on to play key project management and compliance related roles key to delivering the novel Ebok Floating Production Unit (FPU) consisting of a Mobile Offshore Production Unit (MOPU) and Floating Storage and Offloading Unit (FSO), the first of its kind in Nigeria.
In 2018 Hussein was engaged by Mauritius based energy equities firm, Koral Energy International to serve as Country manager in charge of their Nigeria operations. While at Koral he was tasked with undertaking a statutory audit of their historical operations with existing service providers, resulting in a recovery of circa $2m; in tandem with overseeing statutory class mandated life extension programmes of both the MOPU Veer Prem and FSO Virini Prem, both of which were at the tail-end of their design service life.
Hussein brings on board an in-depth and hands-on understanding of both the operational and commercial realms of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria and is a member of various industry bodies of repute.