Chappal Appoints Ufoma Joseph Immanuel as Managing Director

Ufoma Joseph Immanuel has been appointed as the Managing Director of Chappal Petroleum Development Company ‘Chappal’, effective January 2021. Ufoma is also one of the founding partners of Chappal, an ESG focused energy independent established to extract deep value from distressed brownfield Upstream opportunities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Chappal Development Company will focus on the challenges faced in the continued development of mature assets, like produced water management, evacuation logistics, gas development, capex optimisation and infrastructure replacement.

Prior to joining Chappal, Ufoma was the CFO of Energy Link Infrastructure (“ELI”) and instrumental in the milestone breakthrough for the organization as the first Nigeria company to have a Terminal Establishment Order and Oil Pipeline License issued to a single entity. At ELI, after pioneering the concept of the Alternative Crude Oil Evacuation System (“ACOES”) for the Oil Mining Lease Number 18 (OML 18) Joint Venture (Nigerian National Petroleum Company and Eroton Exploration and Production Company), he led the financing of the project and oversaw the development. The ACOES system is a 50-kilometer subsea pipeline to a dedicated 2 million barrel per day Crude Oil Floating, Storage, Offshore (FSO) Facility offshore Nigeria.

Ufoma was the former Head of Corporate Finance and Strategy at Eroton Exploration and Production. He led the transition team at Eroton, following its acquisition of OML 18 from SPDC and oversaw hydrocarbon accounting, offtake and crude handling arrangements operations alongside the development and management of the Opex and Capex budgets for the asset. Ufoma was also responsible for managing the Reserve Based Lending Syndicate that executed successful hedging programs that saw Eroton avoid the oil price crash 2014-2017.

Commenting on the appointment, Mr. Austin Avuru, the Chairman of Chappal, stated “Ufoma is a renowned industry professional with years of experience in financial planning. Over the past few years, he led notable projects for some organisations within the Nigerian oil and gas sector. With his extensive financial and managerial experience notably in the development and management of strategic opportunities, we are confident that Chappal will be rightly positioned to meet the expectations of its stakeholders.