Benedict Peters

Benedict Peters is an African billionaire businessman with extensive assets in the oil and gas and mining industries. He is the founder and CEO of Aiteo, Africa's largest indigenous oil producer, and Bravura Holdings, a vertically integrated mining company developing platinum, lithium, steel, copper, and gold assets in countries throughout Africa, including Ghana, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Libya, Tanzania, and South Africa. Peters is also a born-again Christian and a prominent financier of the gospel of Jesus Christ across the world.

 

Peters started his business career in oil trading by working in various capacities for Ocean and Oil Services Limited and, subsequently, MRS Oil and Gas Limited.

 

In 1999, at the age of 33, he founded Sigmund Communecci – a petroleum product supply and trading company, and built it into the single largest operator of tank farms in Nigeria.

 

In 2008, Sigmund Communecci was rebranded into Aiteo. Just six years later, in 2014, in its quest to become an integrated energy company, Aiteo acquired a controlling stake in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29, containing 11 oil and gas fields, and the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) in the Eastern Niger Delta, from Royal Dutch Shell Plc after a competitive bidding process.

 

Over the past nine years, Peters has transformed Aiteo into the largest indigenous oil-producing company in Africa, producing close to 100,000 barrels of oil per day and contributing over five percent of Nigeria's daily oil production. 

 

In November 2023, Aiteo recorded a historic milestone in the African oil and gas sector when it launched a new grade of crude called Nembe through a joint venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Nembe has a low sulphur content and low carbon footprint due to flare gas elimination, which meets the required specifications of major buyers in Europe. The Nembe crude stream will be managed and marketed by a joint venture between NNPC and Aiteo Eastern E&P Co. Ltd. It is the first such crude marketing project solely run by Nigerian entities.

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Primarily through his company, Bravura Holdings, and other commercial entities, Peters has also become one of the foremost private Black African miners in Africa, developing gold, platinum, copper, steel, lithium, and other mining assets all throughout Southern, Central, and West Africa.

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Peters shares a deep faith in Christianity, and manages with his wife, Ella Peters, philanthropic organizations and initiatives aimed at strengthening rural communities, improving access to education in rural areas, and helping local communities use their water resources responsibly.