[3] After the initial public offering in March 2005, Afren rapidly expanded its portfolio across six countries: Nigeria, São Tomé & Príncipe JDZ, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Iraqi Kurdistan.
[5] On 4 March 2015 Afren defaulted on its 2016 bonds after refusing to make a $15 million interest payment in order to preserve cash for an ongoing capital structure review.
[10] On 31 July 2015 Afren plc released a corporate update announcing that, having failed to secure refinancing, the board of the company would file papers to put the organisation into administration.
[13] A suit was filed by Petroleum Zion Exploration and Production Ltd, at the Federal High Court, Lagos, claiming that the company interfered with their transaction to purchase Afren's stake in Oil Mining Lease ("OML") 26.
[14] On 27 October 2015, a Financial Times article reported on estimates that the sale of Afren's assets would raise only $200 million, leaving $1.7 billion of outstanding debt.
[18] In May 2017, it was reported that the administrators of Afren PLC, AlixPartners UK, had been seeking access to funds, which had originally been meant for an environmental clean-up in Nigeria, so they could be given to bondholders.