Roger Thompson Brown slid seamlessly last month into the role of chief executive at Nigerian independent Seplat Petroleum.

The new position sees Brown step up from the chief financial officer spot he held since joining the company in 2013, tapping his two decades-plus of experience in global debt and equity markets to help last year's acquisition of AIM-listed Eland Oil & Gas.

The Eland merger added exploration and producing acreage in OML-40 and the Ubima field to Seplat's lucrative portfolio, which now covers stakes in eight onshore blocks in the Niger Delta and four more that it operates directly.

Having guided Seplat through a dual listing on the London and Lagos stock exchanges in 2014, Brown took firm grasp of a company that just four years earlier had acquired Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell's operatorship of OMLs 4, 38 and 41, and is now working up an array of oil plays and gas-to-wire projects.

“We’re interested in acquiring more marginal acreage under the current round but we’ll bid via Newton Energy, one of the subsidiaries which holds our stake in Pillar’s Umuseti field, targeting opportunities most relevant to us and preferably close to existing facilities,” Brown says.

Born in 1970, Brown’s journey began in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he schooled until moving to Dundee University in Scotland for a degree in accounting and computer science. He landed a job in Edinburgh with Coopers & Lybrand, now PwC, while studying to become a chartered accountant.

He joined the Standard Bank Group in 2000 to work on electrification and gas-fuelled power plants, initially out of Singapore and then London, where he led the renewables team from 2002, pursuing projects from biofuels in India to early-stage risk capital in the biggest wind farm in Brazil.

“They say BP’s Lord John Browne was too early in trying to launch Beyond Petroleum back in 2000, and the same really applied to renewables such as wind and solar which then relied heavily on subsidy — projects lacked commercial stability and were often driven by inertia,” he says.

When Standard’s head of global oil and gas moved on, Brown took over just as carbon credit funding was ascendant. He set up a dedicated team to handle projects such as an effort to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions in China.

“Reducing CO₂ is fine but the problem with carbon credits was that all the low-hanging fruit got picked early on and the work petered out," he says. "Most of the effort had gone into aerosols in China and elsewhere.”

He explains how the risk profiles for oil and gas are substantively different because oil is a global business and subject to macro-political factors and in tough times represents a high-risk revenue stream, while the gas business is primarily a utility risk.

“Gas wells produce for longer with greater capital investment but have a contracted revenue stream, and all our 15-year gas purchase agreements at Seplat are directed to the domestic market, where we are left with the payment risk,” he says.

Brown's background helped him understand how power companies manage risk, spurring him to develop the value chain.

“We are looking at compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, but I don’t see us going into retail, and we’ve no plan in the short term to become an independent power producer,” he says.

Catapult

Seplat is one the largest bulk gas sellers in Nigeria, second only to Chevron, and is working with Shell to complete the Assa North-Ohaji South (ANOH) gas facility in Imo State before the end of 2021.

The project is set to catapult Seplat’s total processed gas output to more than 600 million cubic feet per day, making it Nigeria’s lead gas processor.

“Right now, we’re not getting the full value, so we intend separating the wet gas before stripping out the condensate and producing butane and propane for domestic consumption," Brown says. "It’s a growing market which currently nobody is serving.”

He also aims to attract other gas producers to take up spare processing capacity at the Oben plant where there is plenty of free land for expansion, arguing this would fit well with the government’s strategic drive for gas-fuelled growth.

“It’s essential to meet the highest levels of governance," he says. "Seplat has always been able to raise money as we manage our liquidity carefully, working with both international and local banks and tapping the equity markets. We also have Eurobonds in place.”

Brown says he is open to expanding into renewables: “After all, we are an independent energy company, but it has to be a business line that we can scale up. No small-scale solar ventures for us.”

Getting paid will not present a problem, he says. “It’s mostly take-or-pay and we have confidence in arrangements made under the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency."

Brown admits the frustrations faced by business in Nigeria and stresses the need "to spend time on the ground, to engage at multiple levels, to never rely on just one source and always read between the lines".

“Don’t just listen to what you’re told but also how you’re being told," he says. "The suitcase business model simply doesn’t work here, and you must be plugged in to know what’s going on, how to handle events and to understand the local approach to problem-solving.”

He says Nigerians "are used to dealing with tough infrastructure on a daily basis but still find time to laugh. Body language is important, and one needs a high level of emotional intelligence" to pick up on subtle signals.

Brown adds: “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love this country...Nigeria simply gets you in the heart.”

(This article has been amended to correct the envisaged completion date of the Assa North-Ohaji South (ANOH) gas facility from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021.)

Production

'You must be plugged in to know what’s going on' - Seplat's Brown drives ahead in Nigeria