The Teflon Company: How Gulf Energy’s Insiders Built Billions on Kenya’s Fuel, and Walked Away Clean

In the final days of March 2026, as Kenyans crowded Easter forecourts across the country, the Republic of Kenya stood eleven days from running dry. Not because of a global supply catastrophe, not because the world’s oil wells had seized, but because a single company — handpicked by the government, awarded the most lucrative fuel import mandate in the country’s history, and shielded by ownership structures deliberately routed through Mauritius — had failed to deliver what it was contracted to deliver. That company was Gulf Energy Limited. And its principals, having already cashed out billions from a French buyout, were nowhere near the docks when the crisis erupted.

Four senior government officials were arrested on April 2, 2026. The Petroleum Principal Secretary, Mohamed Liban. The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority Director-General, Daniel Kiptoo. The Kenya Pipeline Company Managing Director, Joe Sang. And the KPC Deputy Director for Petroleum, Joseph Wafula. All four have since resigned. None are named Gulf Energy. Yet Gulf Energy controls over 80 percent of Kenya’s petrol imports under the government-to-government arrangement — the largest single allocation awarded to any oil marketing company in the country. The question that Kenya’s investigators, politicians, and long-suffering motorists must now demand an answer to is simple: when the contracted company fails, fabricated shortage or not, who authorised the emergency exit, who profited from it, and why has no one touched the company that made all of this possible?

THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOMINANCE

Gulf Energy did not become the most powerful oil company in Kenya by accident. Its rise is a story of patient relationship-building, regulatory capture, and political access spanning more than two decades — a story whose protagonists built personal fortunes measured in billions of shillings before the company changed hands, and whose successors continue to operate the machinery from inside its boardrooms today.

The company was founded in 2005 as a Nairobi-based special purpose vehicle for bulk oil supplies, initially serving commercial and institutional clients. It expanded methodically across East and Central Africa — Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, South Africa — accumulating fuel storage infrastructure in both Mombasa and Nairobi. By the time the original shareholder group began engineering their exit, Gulf Energy had become what industry insiders described as a company whose footprint exceeded its market share: a business with outsized influence over Kenya’s petroleum supply chain.

The original ownership structure has been extensively documented in records from the Business Registration Service. Suleiman Said Shahbal, the Mombasa investment banker and politician who would later serve as an East African Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament, held a 25 percent stake through his wholly-owned vehicle, Monte Carlo Investments Limited. Francis Koome Njogu, the Meru businessman and hotelier who served as Managing Director, held 20 percent directly. Duncan King’ori Mukira held 12.5 percent. Paul Kiprotich Limoh — who today serves as Gulf Energy’s CEO and its public face before Senate committees — held a matching 12.5 percent stake.

The remaining 25 percent stake was held through a company called Nama Kenya Limited, a United Kingdom-registered entity with a minority Kenyan director in Ahmed Said Bajaber, who also sits on the board of Gulf African Bank. The beneficial ownership of Nama Kenya Limited beyond Bajaber’s disclosed minority stake has never been definitively established in public records — a structural opacity that, as events in 2026 demonstrate, is far from incidental.

Mauritius is not a coincidence. It is a decision. When the majority shareholder of Kenya’s most powerful fuel importer sits in an offshore jurisdiction beyond the reach of Kenya’s disclosure laws, that is a governance failure the government chose to live with.

THE RUBIS WINDFALL AND THE OPAQUE RESTRUCTURING

In November 2019, French multinational Rubis Energie — which had already acquired KenolKobil in a Sh36 billion transaction in March of that year — announced it had signed a share purchase agreement for the acquisition of Gulf Energy Holdings Limited. The deal was completed in December 2019, giving Rubis a combined market share exceeding 21 percent and making it Kenya’s largest petroleum retailer overnight. The Competition Authority of Kenya approved the transaction; the Energy Regulatory Commission gave its blessing; the machinery of the state nodded through the consolidation of an already dominant player into an even more dominant foreign-owned conglomerate.

For the original Gulf Energy shareholders, the Rubis deal was transformative. Suleiman Shahbal is estimated to have earned approximately Sh2.4 billion from the transaction — the largest single payout of any named shareholder, commensurate with his 25 percent stake through Monte Carlo Investments. Francis Koome Njogu is estimated to have received approximately Sh1.9 billion for his 20 percent holding. Duncan Mukira and Paul Kiprotich Limoh each received an estimated Sh1.2 billion for their matching 12.5 percent stakes. The total value extracted by the four named Kenyan principals exceeded Sh6.7 billion — and that is before accounting for the Nama Kenya Limited stake and the Mauritius-based Auron Energy holding that, depending on the transaction structure, may represent an additional layer of beneficial wealth that has never been publicly disclosed.

Shahbal payout (est.): Sh2.4 billion

Njogu payout (est.): Sh1.9 billion

Mukira payout (est.): Sh1.2 billion

Limoh payout (est.): Sh1.2 billion

Combined named Kenyan principals: Sh6.7 billion+

What happened after Rubis took control is where the story becomes significantly more complex. The Competition Authority of Kenya’s records show a separate transaction: the proposed acquisition of 80 percent of the issued share capital of Gulf Energy Limited — a distinct operating entity from the holdings company — by Auron Energy Limited, registered in Mauritius. This Auron Energy is not the same Auron Energy E&P Limited that Gulf later used to acquire Tullow Oil’s Kenya assets in 2025. The structures have multiplied, the Mauritius connections have deepened, and the beneficial ownership of the largest single bloc of Gulf Energy’s operating entity remains, in 2026, a matter the company has been permitted to leave unresolved.

In September 2025, Gulf Energy’s affiliate Auron Energy E&P Limited completed the acquisition of Tullow Oil’s entire Kenyan working interests — the Lokichar oil fields — for a minimum consideration of US$120 million. The deal was advised by Dentons Hamilton Harrison and Mathews. It was hailed as a landmark transaction, proof of Gulf Energy’s strategic evolution from a downstream fuel distributor into an upstream exploration player. What it also represented was a dramatic expansion of Gulf Energy’s footprint across Kenya’s entire petroleum value chain — from the wellhead in Turkana to the pump in Nairobi — at precisely the moment when the government’s G2G arrangement was making it the indispensable gatekeeper of Kenya’s fuel supply.

THE GOVERNMENT-TO-GOVERNMENT ARRANGEMENT: A MONOPOLY BY DESIGN

The government-to-government petroleum import framework was established in 2023, following the severe fuel shortages of 2022 that produced long queues at filling stations and a foreign exchange crisis that threatened to paralyse the economy. The framework was designed to stabilise supply by removing the volatility of open-market procurement, replacing it with sovereign-backed agreements with Gulf state oil majors: Saudi Aramco, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and the Emirates National Oil Company. Payment in Kenyan shillings, with a 180-day credit facility, was supposed to ease pressure on the dollar.

Three local oil marketing companies were nominated to handle the imports: Gulf Energy, Galana Oil Kenya, and Oryx Energies. The selection criteria — centred on liquidity thresholds that only the largest players could meet — was described by the IMF and the National Treasury as a structural distortion of market competition. The framework, critics noted from its inception, concentrated procurement power among a handful of politically connected firms and gave five major Kenyan banks outsized influence over dollar allocation. It was, in short, not merely a logistics arrangement but an economic chokepoint — and Gulf Energy held the most lucrative position within it.

Under the G2G framework, Gulf Energy was contracted to import between 170,000 and 200,000 metric tons of diesel monthly — the largest single allocation awarded to any nominated oil marketing company. Its dominance extended to petrol: Gulf Energy handles more than 80 percent of Kenya’s petrol imports under the arrangement. By 2023, Gulf Energy’s CEO Paul Kiprotich Limoh was appearing before Senate committees to confirm that the company had remitted US$686 million in fuel payments — a figure that speaks not merely to the scale of the G2G business but to the extraordinary concentration of national risk in a single, Mauritius-shadowed corporate entity.

Gulf Energy was not just an oil company. Under the G2G framework, it was the load-bearing wall of Kenya’s fuel supply. When it failed, the entire structure cracked.

THE EASTER CRISIS: HOW GULF ENERGY FAILED KENYA

The crisis of March 2026 was not sudden. It was bureaucratic, documented, and — crucially — known to every senior official in Kenya’s energy architecture weeks before Kenyans noticed anything at all. Gulf Energy was under cargo code KG05/2026, contracted to deliver 85,000 metric tons of petrol. The vessel designated for the cargo, MT Elka Apollon, had loaded fuel at Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates. It never sailed. The Strait of Hormuz had been effectively closed following the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, and the tanker sat at anchor while Kenya’s stocks declined.

Gulf Energy admitted the problem on March 18, 2026, during an emergency crisis meeting with the technical committee of the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. Their proposed solution was a partial fix: two smaller vessels delivering a combined 76,000 metric tons — a shortfall of 9,000 tons against the contracted quantity, in a week when Easter demand was projected to spike 20 percent. The ministry’s own internal projections, contained in a leaked document reviewed by The Standard, concluded that national petrol stocks as of March 19 would sustain only 11 days of normal consumption. A demand surge would reduce that to seven days. The country would run dry by April 2.

The National Security Council Committee, chaired by the President, was convened. Emergency powers were granted to the Ministry of Energy to bypass the G2G framework. On March 25, the government awarded emergency contracts to One Petroleum Services and Oryx Energies — neither of them Gulf Energy — to deliver fuel at a rate of $290 per metric ton, against the $84 per metric ton G2G rate. The premium was not a negotiating failure. It was the arithmetic of desperation, and Kenyans would pay for it at the pump: a surcharge of Sh17.49 per litre attributable to the emergency procurement.

Gulf Energy, to compound the crisis it had triggered, kept attempting to recover the situation with proposals that arrived too late and at specifications below Kenyan legal standards. On March 21, three days after admitting failure, the company proposed a 37,000-ton cargo from Saudi Aramco to be carried by MT NCC Najeem, with a projected delivery date of April 8 to 10 — a week after Kenya would have run out of fuel. When the cargo documentation was reviewed, ministry officials confirmed in a letter dated March 25 that the petrol in question had an octane rating of RON 91 against Kenya’s mandatory minimum of RON 93, contained elevated sulphur levels, and included manganese — a metallic additive banned under Kenyan petroleum regulations. The ministry nonetheless granted a quality exemption, characterising it as a matter of national security of supply.

Gulf Energy did not bid for the emergency tender issued on March 18. While Hass Petroleum, Oryx Energies, E3 Energies, and One Petroleum submitted competitive offers, Gulf — the company that had created the emergency — was absent from the process entirely.

THE MV PALOMA AND THE MANUFACTURED SHORTAGE

It is the events surrounding the MV Paloma that have drawn criminal investigators most acutely and most dangerously close to a network of actors that extends well beyond the four officials already arrested. The DCI’s public statements confirm that the vessel docked at Mombasa between March 27 and March 29, 2026. Preliminary findings indicate that the cargo originated from Saudi Aramco before being sold to a separate international firm and redirected through a local Kenyan importer. The vessel was, according to investigators, originally destined for Angola — a routing that, if confirmed, would establish that the fuel was deliberately diverted to Mombasa through intermediaries at a moment of manufactured vulnerability.

KPC’s quality assurance manager tested the cargo and rejected it for excess sulphur content. Officials then allegedly attempted to offload the fuel regardless, triggering the DCI raids of April 2. The preliminary overpricing estimate stands at Sh4 billion. If a second anticipated shipment under similar arrangements is confirmed, the figure rises to Sh8 billion.

Presidential spokesperson Felix Koskei confirmed that primary duty bearers within the petroleum supply chain may have manipulated data on in-country fuel stocks to exploit rising global oil prices and heightened public anxiety — the precise conditions that Gulf Energy’s contractual failure had created. The government’s statement to the nation was direct: the emergency shipment was procured in blatant breach of the G2G framework, at a price significantly above contracted rates, in complete disregard of established emergency procurement procedures, and was of substandard quality. The DCI has confirmed it is tracing bank accounts of companies in the petroleum trade for kickbacks, and has stated that a wider network beyond the arrested officials is under active investigation.

Gulf Energy created the emergency. The emergency created the pretext. The pretext created the profit. And the profit, preliminary estimates suggest, was Sh4 billion — potentially Sh8 billion if the second shipment is confirmed.

THE POLITICAL IMPUNITY AND THE WANDAYI QUESTION

Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi was copied on every warning. The ministry letter of March 17 from Petroleum PS Mohamed Liban to Gulf Energy’s CEO Paul Limoh, requesting an update on the missing PMS cargo, was a ministry communication — which means its contents were available to the CS. By March 18, the technical committee had already classified the situation as dire. By March 19, the stock projections showing an April 2 stockout date were circulating at the ministry level. And by March 25, Wandayi’s ministry was granting quality waivers to below-specification fuel from a company that had already failed its primary obligation.

Wandayi did not speak publicly about the crisis until after the arrests. When he finally issued a statement, it was framed as a declaration of decisive action — the ministry had stopped the second cargo, he said, to protect the public interest. He accused a section of political leaders of spreading disinformation. He warned cartels against exploiting uncertainty. He did not address why Gulf Energy, which had triggered the crisis, received neither a financial penalty, nor a public censure, nor a suspension from the next import cycle. He did not address whether he or his office had approved the quality exemption for the RON 91 cargo. He has not been arrested. He has not been summoned. He continues to serve.

The silence of politically powerful actors in the face of documented institutional failure is not new in Kenya. But the scale of the benefit asymmetry in this case is stark. Four career civil servants have been arrested, resigned, and subjected to criminal investigation. The company that created the preconditions for the entire scandal — by failing to deliver a contracted cargo it had accepted sovereign-backed payment terms to supply — has faced no consequences. Gulf Energy remains a nominated oil marketer for the next import cycle.

THE DEEPER NETWORK: GULF POWER, GALLANT, AND THE MAURITIUS WEB

The governance questions surrounding Gulf Energy are not confined to the petroleum import arrangement. The company’s directors and former shareholders sit at the centre of a web of energy interests that extends into power generation, real estate, and banking — all of them touching, in various configurations, publicly funded revenue streams.

Gulf Power Limited, a thermal electricity generation company with an installed capacity of 80.32 megawatts, holds a Power Purchase Agreement with Kenya Power under which it received Sh3.569 billion in the financial year ended June 2022 — at an average rate of Sh44.07 per unit, more than four times the national average generation cost. The company’s majority shareholder is Gallant Power Limited, registered in Mauritius, which controls 80 percent of Gulf Power. The remaining 20 percent is split between the Kenya Power and Lighting Company Staff Retirement Benefits Scheme and Noora Power Limited — in which both Suleiman Shahbal and Francis Koome Njogu hold 50 percent stakes respectively. A Senate committee examining the Gulf Power arrangement in 2023 directly asked whether former officials — including former Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi and former permanent secretaries — held beneficial interests in the Mauritius entity. The managing director denied this but declined to produce a list of Gallant Power’s actual beneficial owners.

Shahbal’s GulfCap Group, operating across finance, real estate, energy, and hospitality, has continued to expand its footprint under his EALA parliamentary platform. His Gulf African Bank, Kenya’s first fully Shariah-compliant financial institution, ranks among the country’s top 15 banks by assets. His GulfCap Real Estate is developing properties in Nairobi and a Sh120 billion lakeside project in Kisumu in partnership with a politically connected family. For a man who cashed out Sh2.4 billion from Gulf Energy in 2019, the subsequent years have represented not an exit from the energy sector but a lateral migration into its regulatory and political architecture.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY DEFICIT

President William Ruto, addressing the scandal, declared zero tolerance for cartels in the oil sector. He described the scheme as an attempt to exploit rising global prices and public anxiety. His language was unsparing. But the architecture of the arrangement he was denouncing — the G2G framework itself, with its concentration of procurement power, its Mauritius-resident beneficial owners, and its explicit exclusion of competitive market forces — was one his government had inherited, extended to 2027/28, and continued to rely upon even as the criminal investigation unfolded.

Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro offered a different reading. The arrests, he suggested publicly, had less to do with protecting Kenyans than with settling scores between small players who had eaten what belonged to bigger ones. It was a remark that attracted predictable criticism but also — in Kenya’s political ecology — a knowing nod from those familiar with how petroleum sector disputes typically resolve. The DCI’s stated commitment to following bank accounts wherever they lead has been noted. Whether that commitment survives the gravitational pull of the interests involved remains the defining question of the investigation.

The IMF and the National Treasury had already concluded, in assessments predating the scandal, that the G2G framework distorted market competition, concentrated procurement among liquidity-tested oligarchs, and gave major commercial banks disproportionate influence over foreign exchange allocation. The framework was always, in other words, a design choice — one that created systemic vulnerabilities while enriching a narrow group of connected actors. The Easter 2026 crisis was not an anomaly. It was the inevitable consequence of building critical national infrastructure on a foundation of deliberately opaque beneficial ownership and structurally asymmetric accountability.

Gulf Energy failed. Officials cooked the books to paper over it. Competitors were rushed in at three times the price. Kenyans paid Sh17.49 extra per litre. Four civil servants have been arrested. The company that started it all is planning its next import cycle.

WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY LOOKS LIKE

Kenya Insights has confirmed that the DCI’s investigation is being conducted in collaboration with international partners under the Mutual Legal Assistance framework. Bank accounts across the petroleum trade are being traced. Executives from Oryx Energies have been summoned. The investigation has been described as extending well beyond the four officials already in custody. Whether that extension reaches Gulf Energy’s current corporate structure, its Mauritius-resident beneficial owners, or the political network that awarded and maintained the G2G arrangement is the measure by which this investigation will ultimately be judged.

What the evidence establishes, independent of criminal verdicts not yet delivered, is this. A company with opaque beneficial ownership, operating under a government-mandated monopoly over the most sensitive commodity in Kenya’s economy, failed a critical contractual obligation at the worst possible moment. That failure created the conditions for an emergency procurement that cost Kenyans billions. The officials who managed that emergency in breach of legal procurement frameworks are facing criminal charges. The company whose failure triggered the emergency is continuing to operate. And the Cabinet Secretary who was copied on every document, who authorised the quality exemption, and who has not spoken about Gulf Energy’s accountability, remains in office.

Paul Kiprotich Limoh, Gulf Energy’s CEO, has confirmed publicly to Senate committees that the company remitted $686 million in a single year under the G2G arrangement. He was once a shareholder who received an estimated Sh1.2 billion from the Rubis buyout. He is now the operational face of a company whose majority beneficial ownership sits, deliberately, beyond the reach of Kenya’s corporate disclosure requirements. The question of what he knew, when he knew it, and what obligation his company bears for the consequences of its contractual failure is one the DCI says remains very much under investigation.

Kenya has been here before. Oil, contracts, Mauritius, anonymous beneficial owners, emergencies that create windfall profits, and officials who take the fall while the companies that profit walk away clean. The fuel in the pumps is different this time. The structure of impunity is identical.