Gabon Oil's chief executive officer, Serge Toulekima, announced in May 2014 that the company would seek to buy in to these leases as a means of boosting the government's revenue as well as providing developers with capital to expand exploration and production.
[4] In October 2016, the company signed its first upstream contract, beginning production of 1,500 bpd in the Mboumba oil field.
[4] Gabon Oil took a 10 percent ownership interest in March 2019 in the Dussafu block held by BW Offshore.
[6] The government initiated a new policy to encourage multinational oil companies to source work and materials from small- and medium-sized businesses in Gabon.
[11] In October 2015, Serge Toulekima, the Director General of Gabon Oil Company, resigned when he refused to submit a financial and technical audit to the Gabonese government.
[12] Toulekima was temporarily replaced by Arnaud Calixte Engandji Alandji, formerly the Secretary General of the National Organization of Petroleum Employees (ONEP), a powerful Gabonese trade union.
[13] In 2020, the Gabonese newspaper L'Union reported that since 2018 more than XAF85 billion (US$144 million) had gone missing at Gabon Oil Company due to corruption.
[10] Patrichi was arraigned in before the Cour Criminelle Spéciale (Special Criminal Court) in March 2022 on charges of embezzling more than XAF85 billion from Gabon Oil.