Tony Elumelu's Heirs Energies Buys $500M Stake In Nigerian Oil Giant Seplat

Heirs Energies, a firm chaired by Nigerian tycoon Tony Elumelu, has acquired a 20% stake in Seplat Energy PLC (LON: SEPL), a leading Nigerian oil and gas producer. Heirs paid $496 million to buy the 20% stake from Maurel & Prom S.A, a French energy company that helped launch Seplat in 2009.

• Heirs Energies is a leading Nigerian oil and gas firm, currently producing 50,000 barrels of oil and 120 million cubic feet of gas per day.

• Seplat Energy is a much larger producer, with a capacity of over 120,000 barrels of oil and 460 million cubic feet of gas per day.

Heirs Energies is a privately-held company controlled by Tony Elumelu, while Seplat is a publicly-traded company with shares listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Nigerian Exchange. 

The deal was announced shortly after Heirs Energies secured $750 million in debt financing from Afreximbank, a multilateral development bank. It represents one of the largest transactions between domestic oil and gas companies in Nigeria. Heirs Energies has become Seplat’s largest shareholder, trailed by Switzerland-based Petrolin Group with a 13.8% stake. 

Heirs Energies was founded in 2021 and has grown rapidly in a few years. This deal cements its position as a leading Nigerian oil and gas firm and a key part of Elumelu’s empire. Through Heirs Holdings (the parent firm of Heirs Energies), Elumelu controls valuable stakes in financial services giant United Bank for Africa (UBA) Group, power generation giant Transcorp Power, and Transcorp Hotels.