Kase Lawal: from Nigeria to Houston to history: when it comes to oil exploration, refining and trading, the head of CAMAC Holdings is in a class by himself

To hear Kase Lawal tell it, while his company has been successful in carving out a niche for itself, it still remains little more than a drop in the bucket" when compared to its competitors. But when the bucket is the trillion-dollar energy industry, and the niche is pumping and processing crude from saturated oil fields in Africa, then a drop does not an Exxon make, but it is enough to make CAMAC Holdings the largest Black-owned business in the world, and the unassuming 51-year-old CEO a modern-day oil magnate.

In fact, from oil exploration, refining and trading, Lawal's Houston-based company raked in a mind-boggling $1 billion in revenue last year alone. With offices in London, Johannesburg, and Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria, CAMAC routinely moves, produces or trades a barrel of oil every second of every hour of every day. That totals about 100,000 barrels of crude every 24 hours.

"Business is great," Lawal says of CAMAC, celebrating its 20th anniversary this month. "You just have to look at the newspaper to see the price of commodities."

From his company headquarters in a high-rise in the swank Galleria section of Houston, the Nigerian-born entrepreneur can see the world like few others, and reflect on a vision that has helped him overcome a civil war in his homeland and entrenched color barriers in America, parlaying the best of both worlds to claim a share of black gold in the historically lily-White oil industry.

Within CAMAC's Houston offices, Lawal's African roots and African-American influence are apparent. African art decorates the walls, while the talents of African-Americans can be seen throughout the corridors. An extremely private man, Lawal is reserved, yet dignified. But in business, Lawal's bravado comes through. He will be the first to admit that searching for oil is not for the faint of heart. Big risks are taken in search of big rewards. "Sometimes people think I'm crazy because I can sink in $40 million looking for oil or gas," he says. "But if you catch it, if you get it, if you are able to get the reserves [strike oil], it pays for all of the other times you were unsuccessful. It's an interesting business to be in."

The great thing about drilling for oil is that, once established "this industry doesn't know color," he says. "It's about your success in drilling and being able to find reserves."

Much of his business acumen, he says, comes from his childhood experiences. He was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, a city of 8 million people, about 100 miles northwest of Lagos. The son of a father who was a politician and a mother who was a textile store merchant, Lawal grew up during a time of political strife, as the liberation movement fought for freedom from British colonial rule.

Lawal remembers spending endless days at the United States Information Service reading about the similar struggle of Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement in America. "I read anything I could lay my hands on," he says. "I read about Martin Luther King. I was fascinated with the plight of Blacks. America had a tremendous influence on young people all over the world during those days. We were very interested in knowing what was happening. And most young people wanted to come to America. I was just one of the fortunate ones."

He persuaded his parents to let him come to America to attend school. "I remember that morning," he says. "I can still see my mother at the airport crying. It was the first time a person in my family was leaving home and going overseas. It was very difficult, but I was much more excited about what was ahead, and the curiosity of wanting to know what was in America."

He headed straight for Georgia, the hotbed of Freedom Movement activity. He attended Fort Valley State University, before transferring to Texas Southern University, where he obtained a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering. He holds a master's of business administration in finance and marketing from Prairie View A&M University.

Lawal's first taste of the energy business came after graduation when he worked as a chemist for Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and later a chemical engineer with Shell Oil Refining Co.

It wasn't long before Lawal decided to venture out on his own. He started CAMAC first as an agriculture and commodities company that took tobacco from the South and made cigarettes to be sold overseas, but soon decided to use his knowledge of the energy industry to get into the field of oil exploration. But he ran into numerous problems trying to acquire land.

After being unsuccessful at nearly two dozen auctions, Lawal decided to go overseas. He was given a big boost in 1989 when a newly seated Nigerian government indicated that it wanted to encourage its people to get more involved in its lucrative oil industry. One of the people the government reached out to was Lawal, their native son. "Most people working on platform were Nigerians, but their bosses were the major oil company employees from the West," Lawal says. "The government asked me to try to organize Nigerians in the U.S. who were working for oil companies and would be interested in being technical partners with indigenous companies."