Kola Karim: The Nigerian tycoon who recently won a $1 billion Algeria gas contract

When Kola Karim appeared in a recent interview with The School of Hard Knocks, the viral media platform known for blending financial education with storytelling, the discussion centered on success, discipline and business. Yet behind those reflections lies a much bigger story—one that stretches from Nigeria’s oil fields to Algeria’s gas industry, from engineering and infrastructure to hospitality, and increasingly, to international markets.

That story reached a defining moment this year when Arkad Engineering and Construction, the Italian engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company acquired by Karim’s Shoreline Natural Resources in January 2024, secured a $1 billion contract alongside Egypt’s PETROJET for the development of Algeria’s Hassi Bir Rkaiz field. The award stands as the biggest commercial success to emerge from Shoreline’s acquisition of Arkad and highlights Karim’s effort to build an energy and industrial group that extends well beyond Nigeria.

Resilience and Legacy: Kola Karim’s journey

Born on Nov. 24, 1968, Karim’s early years were shaped by personal loss and resilience. After the death of his father, a police officer, he moved to England at the age of 14 with his mother, an entrepreneur, and his five siblings. He studied management and finance before earning an MBA. Karim later attended Harvard Business School and also completed a Master of Laws (LLM) in International Business Law, focusing on environmental practices. His professional career began in Britain as a trainee manager at Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance.

After two years, he moved to HK Beaumont & Associates as a senior manager, gaining experience in finance and corporate management before deciding his future lay back home in Nigeria. In 1993, Karim returned to Nigeria and founded Koda Trading with his mother. The business specialized in importing and exporting bulk feedstock, raw materials, heavy-duty machinery and industrial equipment. The early days were far from easy. Limited access to financing forced the family to mortgage their home to keep the company running.

Two years later, the gamble paid off as the business became profitable, providing the foundation for Karim to broaden his interests beyond trading. That success led to the creation of Shoreline Energy International in 1997. Nearly three decades later, Karim has remained Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the company’s growth from a relatively small enterprise into an integrated industrial group focused on energy and power investments across Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, Shoreline operates across upstream, midstream and downstream segments of the energy business.

Karim’s strategic shift to energy infrastructure

One of the company’s defining milestones came through Shoreline Natural Resources, which expanded its upstream operations with the acquisition of OML 30, an oil asset originally owned by Shell. Located less than 50 kilometers east of Warri in Nigeria’s onshore Niger Delta, the 1,097-square-kilometer lease contains eight producing fields with estimated 2P reserves of 1.2 billion barrels of oil and 2 trillion cubic feet of gas. Current production averages about 70,000 barrels of oil per day, while the asset has the long-term potential to increase production to about 300,000 barrels per day. Existing field infrastructure has a combined processing capacity of approximately 395,000 barrels per day, while OML 30 also owns and operates the Trans-Forcados Pipeline, which has export capacity of about 850,000 barrels per day.

In 2012, Shoreline Energy partnered with UK-based Heritage Oil to acquire a stake in OML 30 in a deal reportedly valued at $850 million. The transaction marked one of the largest indigenous investments in Nigeria’s upstream oil industry and strengthened Shoreline’s position among locally owned energy companies with significant producing assets. Karim later broadened his ambitions beyond oil production. In 2018, Shoreline Group partnered with Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil to establish Mota-Engil Nigeria.

Under the arrangement, Mota-Engil holds a 51 percent stake while Shoreline owns the remaining 49 percent. The partnership was designed to combine Mota-Engil’s international construction experience with Shoreline’s knowledge of Nigeria’s business environment to pursue major infrastructure projects across the country. The relationship continued to evolve. In April 2025, Mota-Engil announced plans to acquire DBN Energies from Karim. The company specializes in oil infrastructure construction and has spent 35 years providing compression, pipeline and EPC services to clients including Nigeria LNG, Shell and TotalEnergies.

Inside Kola Karim’s $1 billion Algerian venture

Karim’s ambitions have also moved beyond Africa. In 2026, Shoreline Group completed the purchase of producing oil assets in the United States, marking its first major expansion across the Atlantic. Rather than pursuing exploration projects that could take years to mature, the acquisitions provided immediate production from assets spread across several U.S. states. Karim said the move would allow Shoreline to export the operational expertise it developed in Nigeria into one of the world’s most competitive and transparent energy markets.

The company’s international expansion received another significant boost through Arkad Engineering and Construction. Founded in Milan in 2017, Arkad built its reputation by providing engineering, procurement and construction services for oil and gas projects across the Middle East and Africa. Shoreline Natural Resources completed its acquisition of the Italian company on Jan. 30, 2024, adding an internationally established EPC platform to the group’s engineering operations. The strategy quickly produced results.

Earlier this year, Arkad and Egypt’s PETROJET secured a $1 billion contract to develop Phase 2 of the Hassi Bir Rkaiz oil field in southern Algeria after winning an international tender. The project covers engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning and operational delivery for the field’s second phase. Hassi Bir Rkaiz is operated by Groupement Hassi Bir Rekaiz, a joint venture between Algeria’s Sonatrach and Thailand’s PTTEP. Oil was discovered there in June 2022, and production is about 13,000 barrels a day. PETROJET leads the consortium, while Arkad is the Italian engineering partner responsible for design execution.

For Shoreline, the project represents more than another contract. It is the clearest sign yet that Karim’s decision to acquire Arkad has begun delivering results. By combining Arkad’s international engineering credentials with DBN Energies’ decades of EPC experience in Nigeria, Shoreline has expanded its engineering presence from Sub-Saharan Africa into North Africa and positioned one of Karim’s companies at the center of one of Algeria’s largest energy infrastructure developments in recent decades.

Karim drives $300 million Nigeria hotel play

Karim’s business interests are also extending beyond heavy industry. Through Shoreline Group, he recently signed a $300 million agreement with French hospitality company Accor to develop 10 hotels across eight Nigerian cities by 2030. The partners describe the project as Nigeria’s first nationwide hotel platform and one of the country’s largest single hospitality investments. The development will add more than 1,200 rooms across the midscale, upscale and luxury segments. Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt are expected to anchor the first phase because of their concentration of business activity and international travel, while additional secondary cities will also be included as the network expands.

The timing aligns with broader changes in Nigeria’s hospitality market. Despite being Africa’s largest economy and one of the continent’s busiest business destinations, Nigeria has historically had relatively few internationally branded hotel rooms compared with markets such as South Africa, Morocco and Egypt. Industry data from W Hospitality Group showed that Nigeria had more than 8,000 branded hotel rooms in the development pipeline in early 2026, making it one of Africa’s fastest-growing hospitality markets. The Shoreline-Accor partnership brings together complementary strengths. Shoreline contributes local financing capacity, market knowledge and long-established relationships, while Accor provides internationally recognized brands, operational systems and global hotel management experience across multiple cities.

For Karim, whose career began with a family trading business financed by mortgaging a home, the evolution of Shoreline reflects decades of expansion across industries that demand large amounts of capital and long investment horizons. The recent $1 billion Algerian contract has become the clearest example yet of how that strategy is now producing results outside Nigeria, placing one of his companies among the contractors selected for one of North Africa’s most significant energy development projects.