Austin Avuru, CEO, Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc has now increased his equity interest in Platform Petroleum from 23percent to 37.11percent interest.
Platform Petroleum Limited is an indigenous oil and gas company that is into exploration and production of crude oil and gas. It is the current operator of the Egbaoma field joint venture with Newcross Petroleum Limited.
Avuru, a pioneer Managing Director and later CEO of Seplat will be retiring in July 2020 after 10 years of leading the company.
In these 10 years, Avuru led the development of a strong organisation, the deployment of agile systems, processes and stakeholder relationships that allowed the organisation to grow rapidly from a gross production of 22,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) as at December 2010 to peaks of 111,368boepd gross production as at December 2018 through major drilling campaigns and major new Oil and Gas plants development.
Seplat told the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) that it received notification on February 21, 2020 of a transfer of 7,831,534 ordinary shares held by Platform Petroleum Limited (an entity in which Austin Avuru has an equity interest) to Professional Support Limited (an entity wholly controlled by Austin Avuru).
Similarly, a transfer of 12,828,161 shares held directly by Platform Petroleum was made to certain shareholders of Platform Petroleum and they are therefore no longer considered to be connected persons.
“A further 95,933 LTIP awards for Austin Avuru were released to him and transferred to Professional Support on 24 January 2020”, Seplat added.
Following these transfers, Platform Petroleum holds 20,000,000 shares (3.40percent) and Professional Support holds 38,970,463 shares (6.62percent); based on the Issued Share Capital of 588,444,561.
Avuru now holds nil direct interest and an indirect interest of 58,970,463 ordinary shares (10.02percent) of N0.50k each of the Company.
