Netoil Inc. and the $20 Billion Bet on Africa’s Energy Future
March 2026 | London, United Kingdom
By Netoil Inc. Communications
There is a moment in every major infrastructure story where ambition stops being just a presentation slide and starts becoming real. For the proposed transcontinental gas pipeline connecting Nigeria’s southern fields to European homes and factories, that moment may have arrived — and Roger Tamraz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Netoil Inc., is the man standing at the centre of it.
In March 2026, high-level discussions advanced in London between Nigeria’s federal government, Netoil Inc., and an international consortium of energy industry partners. The talks, which coincided with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s state visit to the United Kingdom, focused on a proposed pipeline that would carry Nigerian natural gas across Chad and Libya, under the Mediterranean, and into Southern Europe — a project with an indicative investment value exceeding $20 billion.
Why Now, and Why Nigeria
The timing is not accidental. Since the disruption of Russian gas flows into Europe following the war in Ukraine, the continent has been in a sustained search for reliable, long-term alternatives. American LNG has filled part of the gap, but at a price and with a political dependency that has made European energy ministries nervous. Africa — and Nigeria in particular — has become a serious answer to that problem.
Nigeria holds the largest proven natural gas reserves on the African continent. For decades, much of that gas has been flared at the wellhead — burned off as a by-product of oil production, generating heat and carbon dioxide rather than revenue. The pipeline project that Netoil is spearheading aims to change that equation fundamentally.
Speaking at the London engagement, Tamraz drew on decades of energy industry experience to frame the project in direct terms:
“Europe’s Achilles heel is energy. The only sustainable long-term solution is in Africa and the Middle East, where the gas reserves exist and where the infrastructure needs to be built. Buyers are ready to commit to 20-year contracts. The technology is proven, and financing solutions are available. What remains is securing the rights-of-way — and we are building.”
That is not a salesman’s pitch. It is the kind of statement that comes from someone who has built refineries, assembled pan-European fuel distribution networks, and navigated the geopolitics of energy across multiple continents. Tamraz founded and built Europe’s Tamoil, eventually expanding it across Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Spain — some 3,000 service stations and three refineries. He knows what it takes to turn large-scale energy infrastructure from concept into reality.
The Project: Scale, Route and Ambition
The pipeline being advanced by the Netoil-led consortium is designed to run from Nigeria’s southern gas fields northward through Chad and Libya, crossing under the Mediterranean to connect with European distribution networks. The consortium expects the project to mobilise indicative investment exceeding $20 billion across both the upstream gas development and midstream pipeline infrastructure components, subject to technical, commercial, regulatory, and financing work streams and the execution of definitive agreements.
The pipeline’s capacity targets are significant. With a projected capacity of 30 billion cubic metres per year, the project represents a substantial addition to both regional and international gas supply. To put that in perspective, this would account for roughly 8 to 10 percent of total European gas imports — enough to meaningfully shift the continent’s energy balance and reduce its dependence on any single supplier.
Henry Erimodafe, Project Director at Netoil Inc., was clear about what the pipeline represents for both sides of the arrangement:
“This is a strategic win-win. For Nigeria and the transit countries, it can unlock major investment, job creation, and long-term value from resources that are currently underutilised. For Europe, it establishes a new, reliable corridor of supply that supports energy security and industrial competitiveness for decades. The proposed gas pipeline is not a short-term fix — it is long-life infrastructure that converts Nigeria’s vast gas reserves into dependable energy for Europe, underpinned by serious capital and a structured delivery process.”
Government Backing and Political Momentum
The Nigerian government’s engagement with the project has been unambiguous. Ekperikpe Ekpo, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, described the London discussions as both timely and historic. He noted that Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act and the President’s executive orders for the petroleum sector have created a conducive environment for attracting investment — a reference to the sweeping 2021 legislation that restructured the country’s oil and gas sector, streamlined regulation, improved fiscal terms for investors, and separated the commercial operations of NNPC Limited from its previous regulatory role.
Olalekan Ogunleye, Executive Vice President of Gas, Power and New Energy at NNPC Limited, confirmed the national oil company’s readiness to partner with credible investors and work through any administrative barriers that may arise. For foreign investors assessing long-term infrastructure commitments, that kind of institutional backing matters enormously.
Alain Bolo, Chief Executive Officer of Unicorn Energy Resources and a member of the consortium, highlighted an important additional dimension of the project’s value: its environmental upside. The pipeline creates a commercial incentive to capture gas that would otherwise be flared — aligning profit motive with environmental responsibility in a way that regulatory pressure alone has rarely achieved. Nigeria has long struggled with the reputational and environmental damage associated with widespread flaring; this project offers a structural solution.
The Broader Context: Africa’s Pipeline Moment
The Netoil-led initiative is not happening in isolation. It is part of a broader shift in how African gas is being viewed — both by African governments and by European buyers eager to diversify their supply portfolios.
The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project is making steady progress after Algeria, Nigeria and Niger reaffirmed their commitment and accelerated construction, with approximately 2,400 km of pipeline already laid — roughly 60 percent of the total route. A parallel Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project is also under development, which would traverse 13 West African countries before reaching Europe. Taken together, these projects signal a continent that is moving beyond the extractive, export-raw-commodities model and beginning to develop the infrastructure to deliver processed, high-value energy products directly to end markets.
For Europe, the strategic logic is equally compelling. European demand for diversified gas sources remains high following the sharp reduction of Russian pipeline imports. At the same time, the EU has grown wary of its dependency on American LNG amid an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical environment. A reliable, long-term African supply corridor would give European governments a third option — and the leverage that comes with it.
What Comes Next
The pipeline is still at an early development stage and will be subject to extensive technical, commercial, and regulatory processes. Rights-of-way must be secured across multiple sovereign territories. Environmental assessments must be completed. Financing structures must be finalised. These are not trivial challenges, and the history of transcontinental infrastructure projects is littered with initiatives that stalled at exactly these stages.
But what is different this time — at least according to those involved — is the quality of the political will and the commercial alignment behind it. Buyers in Europe are looking for exactly this kind of long-term supply commitment. Governments in Nigeria and transit countries are more motivated than ever to translate gas reserves into fiscal revenue. And the consortium assembled around Netoil Inc. has the technical expertise, legal representation, and financial relationships to navigate the process.
Roger Tamraz has described the proposed pipeline as something that will create significant long-term revenue and benefits for future generations of Nigerians, while strengthening energy security for Europe. That is, ultimately, the test any infrastructure project of this scale must pass: not just whether it can be built, but whether it endures, delivers, and changes the underlying conditions for the people and economies it connects.
On that standard, the case being made in London is a serious one.
Sources: Punch Nigeria, The Nation, APA News, Channels Television, Economic Confidential, The Cable, Business Insider Africa — March 2026.
