Search results

The former head of state electricity company Société Nigérienne d’Electricité (Nigelec) Foukory Ibrahim has been arrested and jailed on suspicion of embezzling some CFA20bn (£25.7m). Ibrahim was an ally of former president Mamadou Tandja, who was toppled in a February 2010 military coup. Ibrahim had immunity as a serving MP for the Mouvement National pour la Société du Développement, which is now in opposition, but this was lifted last year.

Range Resources has proposed an all-share merger with Frank Timis’ International Petroleum to create a company focused on Trinidad, Russia and onshore Africa. The merger would offer three Range ordinary shares for every two International Petroleum ordinary shares, valuing International Petroleum at some A$105m (US$108m). International Petroleum has assets in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Niger, while Range has assets in Puntland and a main focus in Trinidad and Texas.

A second attack in the Algerian ‘hydrocarbons fortress’ and an emerging narrative in which western governments see an ‘arc of instability’ spanning the Sahara/Sahel region means IOCs must reassess their attitudes to regional risk following the traumatic In Aménas gas plant siege, write Jon Marks and John Hamilton.

Coming only days after France committed troops and its air force to overturning dramatic advances made by Islamist militants in Mali, the 16 January attack on a gas production facility at In Amenas, in south-eastern Algeria, underlined the security threat and political volatility that now blight the Saharan/Sahel region. Never during the 1990s conflict with radical Islam did a major Algerian hydrocarbons facility face such attack.

The World Bank board has approved $203m of funding for the Niger Basin Water Resources Development and Sustainable Ecosystems Management Programme, which includes support for the Kandadji Programme.

African Petroleum’s sister company International Petroleum has received cabinet approval for four production sharing contracts for the Manga 1, Manga 2, Aborak and Ténéré Ouest blocks in south-east Niger.

Six months into the crisis which tore up Mali, its neighbours are still debating security strategies to resolve a conflict which threatens regional stability and foreign economic interests. Despite the lack of outright consensus, the international community is increasingly leaning towards a political exit through negotiation with militant groups, leaving armed intervention off the table, writes Oualid Khelifi

The government has awarded nine production-sharing agreements to five oil companies, including Frank Timis’ International Petroleum and three firms from neighbouring Nigeria

Niger is gearing up to start exporting oil from the Agadem Block and hopes to revive the Trans-Sahara Gas Pipeline project to enable it to export its gas, writes Thalia Griffiths

The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has signed an agreement with Norway’s Scatec Solar to develop solar projects in West and Central Africa.

The problems confronting Niger’s Zinder Refining Company (Soraz) point to wider issues facing China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and other Chinese firms that have made big investments in Central/West Africa

Niger is struggling to capitalise on its recent downstream developments, while Chinese investors have a battle to safeguard their profit margins across the region

Dramatic events across the Sahel have heightened concerns about instability and security threats across the region, where criminal networks and jihadist cells – including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) splinter groups – have been increasingly active from southern Algeria to northern Nigeria

The World Bank’s board has approved supplemental financing of $15m to the Second Growth Policy Reform Credit (GPRC-2) to help cover additional financing needs caused by spillovers from the Libyan crisis and food shortages, both of which threaten the country’s economic progress

State company Société Nigerienne des Produits Pétroliers (Sonidep) formally started sales of locally refined products from 1 January, offering petrol and diesel at outlets across the country