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Soma Oil & Gas has delivered its exploration data to the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, along with an application for production-sharing agreements (PSAs). The ministry has opened a data room to store and display the materials, and appointed Spectrum ASA to market the data. Soma said its analysis of the 2D seismic data had identified specific prospects which merited further exploration, and it had applied for PSAs targeting these prospects.

The federal government of Somalia signed a preliminary agreement with the federal member states on 21 October on the sharing of revenue from petroleum and mineral resources. Petroleum and mineral resources minister Mohamed Muktar Ibrahim told the Africa Upstream conference in Cape Town that the government aimed to establish a common vision on ownership, control, and how the state’s share of revenue could be distributed among all Somalis, federally, regionally and locally. In the absence of a central policy, federal states such as Somaliland and Puntland have conducted their own licensing.

Norway’s Spectrum ASA has announced an agreement to acquire 28,000km of long offset 2D seismic data offshore southern Somalia. Spectrum’s survey will cover areas licensed to Pecten, a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil, which have been under force majeure since 1992. It will also manage and market 20,000km of 2D data gathered and processed by Soma Oil & Gas in 2014, which it says the survey is designed to complement. Soma – a UK company chaired by former Conservative party leader Lord (Michael) Howard – is giving the results of its survey to the federal government in return for the right to pre-emptively choose 12 blocks.

The Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG)’s leaked July 2015 report into Soma’s capacity-building agreement (CBA) with the Ministry of Petroleum includes a number of allegations, all of which the company has rejected.

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office said on 31 July that it had opened an investigation into Soma Oil & Gas in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia. The investigation follows a report by the United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group to the Security Council which said that Soma had been making regular payments to the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources since mid-2014, some to senior civil servants who were instrumental in securing the company’s initial contract and negotiating subsequent agreements. Soma said it was confident that there was no basis to the allegations and it was co-operating fully with the SFO.

Africa Energy Corporation, the former Horn Petroleum, has given notice to the authorities in Puntland that it intends to withdraw from the January 2007 Nugaal and Dharoor production-sharing agreements (PSAs) with immediate effect. Horn suspended its operations in Puntland in February, and relaunched in March with a new name and new corporate strategy.

The UK’s Soma Oil & Gas says it is almost ready to transfer 2D seismic data acquired offshore Somalia to the federal government and will then seek to negotiate a production sharing agreement (PSA) covering areas it considers most prospective. Soma chief executive Robert Sheppard told an Energy Exchange forum on Somalia in London on 27 April the company had completed processing in August 2014, and was in talks with the government about transferring the data. “We are now at the point to move to the additional stage. To highlight the most prospective [areas], to shoot 3D. But to do that, we need a contract with the government, a PSA,” he said.

The World Bank is seeking expressions of interest from consultants to develop a power master plan study for Somalia, and the autonomous territories of Puntland and Somaliland. The work is funded with a grant from the Africa Renewable Energy Access trust fund. The project involves producing regionally based power master plans covering Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland, with work to take up to 24 months. This will include mapping the existing electricity sector in the three territories, to establish the number of customers.

Somalia’s petroleum ministry says it has no knowledge of plans to review a series of contracts, including an oil exploration agreement with the UK’s Soma Oil & Gas. On 17 September the Financial Times reported that the government planned to rewrite or cancel nine big contracts on the advice of a new donor-backed committee, set up in the wake of scandals at the central bank. However, petroleum ministry director general Farah Abdi Hassan told African Energy: “I’ve seen the Financial Times article. It must come from another part of government, as we don’t have any information on that.” Soma is equally in the dark.

The Somali government has turned to the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to resolve its maritime border dispute with Kenya. In its application, posted on the ICJ’s website on 28 August, Somali minister of foreign affairs and investment promotion Abdirahman Dualeh Beileh asked the court to determine the course of the maritime boundary, saying “diplomatic negotiations, in which… respective views have been fully exchanged, have failed to resolve this disagreement”. In its application, Somalia asks the court “to determine, on the basis of international law, the complete course of the single maritime boundary dividing all the maritime areas appertaining to Somalia and to Kenya in the Indian Ocean, including the continental shelf beyond 200 [nautical miles]”.

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Petroleum has signed a co-operation agreement with the Somali Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources aimed at building capacity. Mubadala, part of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Development Company, which is led by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, said the agreement was “aimed at sharing knowledge, increasing the strength of the Somali ministry and its staff”. The agreement follows a deal reached in August 2013 with UK-based Soma Oil & Gas to acquire seismic data in exchange for exploration rights “The focus of the deal is working together on information sharing and to improve the quality of the ministry staff. We are building starting from scratch, the capacity of the ministry is growing, but it needs to be properly improved,” ministry director-general Farah Abdi Hassan told African Energy.

Soma Oil & Gas, led by former UK Conservative party leader Michael Howard, has secured an equity investment of $50m from British Virgin Islands-registered private investment company Winter Sky. Soma has an agreement with the Somali Federal Government to acquire substantial acreage in exchange for shooting seismic, (AE 261/4), and says the funding means it can finalise a contract for a planned 2D exploration programme. “Negotiations with a small number of seismic contractors are at an advanced stage, and Soma expects to make an appointment soon. The seismic work programme will commence within Q1 2014,” a company spokeswoman told African Energy.

Central bank governor Yussur Abrar, the first woman to occupy the post, has resigned after only seven weeks in the job, citing corruption concerns. In a letter to Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, widely reported in the media, she said that, from the moment she was appointed, she had “continuously been asked to sanction deals and violate my fiduciary responsibility to the Somali people as head of the nation’s monetary authority”. She said the deals “put… frozen assets at risk and open the door to corruption”.

A new company specialising in acreage in aspiring independent states has teamed up with a firm owned by a Puntland presidential candidate to explore a block offshore Somalia, writes William Macpherson. Belize-registered Kilimanjaro Capital has announced a farm-in agreement with Amsas Consulting, owned by Puntland 2014 presidential election candidate Dr Ali Abdullahi, for the Amsas-Coriole-Afgoye Block, which is presently under force majeure. Kilimanjaro will obtain a 5% non-working interest in the block,

Genel Energy, the Nathaniel Rothschild-backed exploration company run by former BP chief executive Tony Hayward, has withdrawn its staff from Somaliland citing security concerns. As the territory itself has been untroubled by terrorist attacks in recent times, this may have been a response to broader concerns about the Somalia-based Islamist group Al-Shabaab which launched a devastating attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre in late September. “In the face of a deteriorating security situation, we are temporarily suspending our seismic operations,” a company spokesman told African Energy.