Search results

Royal Dutch Shell, Eni, and several senior Eni executives including chief executive Claudio Descalzi will face a preliminary court hearing in Italy on 20 April. The Milan prosecutor is seeking that they be tried for alleged international corruption offences over the 2011 purchase of Nigerian OPL 245. The companies paid $1.3bn to the Nigerian government, which then transferred $1.1bn to Malabu Oil & Gas, owned by former oil minister Dan Etete, to which he granted rights to the block in 1998.

A 4 September report by anti-corruption campaigner Global Witness has repeated claims of misconduct by Soco International and its contractors in their quest to explore in the Virunga national park. The report, based in part on material gathered for the documentary Virunga, released earlier this year, claims that “Soco and its contractors have made illicit payments, appear to have paid off armed rebels and benefited from fear and violence fostered by government security forces in eastern Congo, as they sought access to Africa’s oldest national park for oil exploration”.

The amount of oil that can be recovered from fields in western Uganda has emerged as a key issue in negotiations on production licences between the government, Tullow Oil and Total. Minister of energy and mineral development Irene Muloni told the East African Petroleum Conference in Kigali on 4 March that, of 6.5bn barrels of oil in place, the companies were proposing to recover only 1.4bn. Ministry permanent secretary Fred Kabagambe-Kaliisa told reporters the government was looking for a recovery factor of at least 25%. He said he hoped the talks would be concluded within three months.

Eskom lost another senior figure on 10 January as chairman Jabu Mabuza resigned, ostensibly because Eskom failed to live up to a promise made by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 11 December that there would be no load-shedding between 17 December and at least 13 January. The promise followed unprecedented stage 6 load-shedding, meaning 6GW of demand went unmet, which caused Ramaphosa to return early from a trip to Egypt.

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan announced on 24 May that Phakamani Hadebe has been confirmed as Eskom chief executive. Hadebe had been in the temporary position since February, managing the utility’s critical financial situation and overseeing the drive to clean up governance. “Hadebe has experience at the Land Bank and Treasury, he had a stint at banking institution Absa, he is competent to steer Eskom and stabilise the institution and position it for its role in the economy,” Gordhan said.

The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) has launched a new five-year strategy with the goal of building on a governance restructuring carried out in early 2018. PIDG is one of the most active development finance institutions working in challenging countries and with new technologies and business models. Implementation of the strategy will be bolstered by additional commitments announced last year of £500m ($655m) from the UK and $100m from the Netherlands over a four-year period.

Angola has opted not to pursue an extended fund facility (EFF) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would have offered significant funding alongside tough conditionality, and will instead seek only technical assistance. “The president of the republic has informed the IMF of the government’s decision to continue their policy dialogue with the fund only within the context of the Article IV consultation and not through discussion concerning an EFF supported programme,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told a news briefing in Washington on 28 June.

South Africa’s Protection of State Information Bill, which was passed by a majority vote in parliament in late April and is now before President Jacob Zuma for signing, has been criticised by a number of bodies, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the Right2Know campaign and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced a settlement with Japan’s Hitachi over its involvement with African National Congress front company Chancellor House and the 4,764MW Medupi coal power plant in South Africa. The settlement comprises an undisclosed payment to the AfDB, and conditional debarment of up to one year.

President José Eduardo dos Santos’ billionaire elder daughter Isabel has added to her portfolio with a controlling stake in Portuguese engineering company Efacec, ten years after she bought 38.3% in Portugal’s Galp Energia in partnership with Portuguese businessman Américo Amorim. Isabel dos Santos, whose fortune was estimated at $3bn last year by Forbes magazine, established the 50/50 Winterfell joint venture with the recently created Empresa Nacional de Distribuição de Electricidade (ENDE) in order to purchase foreign assets. Isabel dos Santos and Winterfell bought a 65% stake in Efacec Power Solutions at the beginning of June from two Portuguese companies, Grupo José de Mello SGPS and Têxtil Manuel Gonçalves.

The 13-16 July third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) in Addis Ababa was a critical step towards ending poverty and achieving universal food security, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said, while European Investment Bank president Werner Hoyer said it contributed toward a renewed architecture for sustainable development.FfD3 committed to a social compact to protect vulnerable populations, with national targets for spending on education, health and other essential services. It recommitted developed economies to spend 0.7% of GNP on aid.

Angola has moved in recent weeks to take concrete legal action against the children of former president José Eduardo dos Santos over longstanding corruption allegations. José Filomeno dos Santos went on trial in December, accused of taking $500m out of the country in 2017 during his time as head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, while at the end of December, a Luanda court ordered the freezing of Isabel dos Santos’ Angolan bank accounts and shares in state companies, as well as the assets of her Congolese art collector husband, Sindika Dokolo.

The suspension by President Goodluck Jonathan of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi led the naira to fall sharply and investors to rue the volatility of Nigerian politics. But it was hardly a surprise, following years of controversy surrounding the highly talented and combative governor, and months of Sanusi’s increasingly public criticism of the management of the oil sector and government finances by Jonathan and his close ally petroleum minister Diezani Allison-Madueke. By naming names in the Senate, Sanusi was more or less directly implicating the ruling clique on Aso Rock in gross malfeasance.

Parliament has passed a bill that aims to make the management of oil revenues more transparent, more than two years after the first oil sales from the newly independent country in July 2011. The Oil Revenue Management Bill, which was approved by parliament in July, must now be approved by the president in order to become law. The bill establishes a framework for how the government can use its oil revenues, which in H2 2011 accounted for 98% of government spending. Under the bill, a single Petroleum Revenue Account will be created to receive all oil sector revenues.

Liberian farmers, charcoal producers and workers have filed a complaint with the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), accusing it of failing to monitor investments made to a failed biomass project. Between 2009 and 2011, Buchanan Renewables (BR) received $216.7m from Opic for a project to harvest rubber trees for biomass, rejuvenate family farms and generate sustainable energy for Liberia. Opic’s investment covered 70% of the costs of the project, which aimed to convert old rubber trees from the former Firestone plantation to woodchip. The woodchips were intended to fuel a 36MW biomass power plant in Monrovia and be sold for export.