Report card: Ghana oil gets a "C" | Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views
-
the most encouraging sign was not the grades on the report card, but the presence of several officials at the event including a member of parliament, the communications director from Tullow Oil, the World Bank country director for Ghana and a Deputy Minister of Energy. Although some of the officials’ comments were perfunctory and fairly predictable, their attendance at least signaled the recognition of civil society as an important stakeholder in Ghana’s oil development.
-
On transparency and citizen participation, for example, the government received “B” grades. Regarding transparency, the report states, “On the positive side, Ghana’s parliament passed the long-delayed and debated petroleum revenue management bill at the beginning of March 2011. The bill is now awaiting presidential approval. While some issues were hotly debated, there was consensus from both the majority and the minority members of parliament on all the transparency provisions. Should the bill approved by parliament become law, there will be a number of important transparency provisions.”
-
Of particular concern is the lack of a legal framework for dealing with oil spills: “The institutional weakness in the environmental protection institutions was demonstrated during the investigation into mud spillage by Kosmos Energy.
Shell Nigeria appeal dismissed in Bonny land dispute | Reuters - 0 views
-
Foreign investors say Nigeria ranks among the most litigious and bureaucratic business environments in the world.
BBC News - Shell loses Nigeria Bonny Terminal land dispute - 0 views
-
Three years ago, a lower court said the oil firm should pay rent to the local community for Bonny Terminal, but Shell says it bought the land outright.
-
"Justice Ekembi Eko upheld that [original] judgement and said that Shell failed to convince the court that they have the certificate of occupancy on the land," Reuters news agency quotes Emmanuel Asido, one of the lawyers representing the community elders, as saying.
Shell loses Nigeria Bonny Terminal land dispute - Royal Dutch Shell plc .com - 0 views
-
The oil giant Shell has lost its appeal against a ruling that it is not the rightful owner of land where it runs Nigeria’s biggest oil export terminal.
Shell embedded spies in host governments of Nigeria, Dubai and Iraq - Royal Dutch Shell... - 0 views
Jubilee's oil…Bonyere's gas: what's going on? | Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views
-
The World Bank is providing funding for the gas project and Bank officials do not understand why the project is stalling.
-
Yeboah’s article focuses on citizens’ grievances in Bonyere and the neighboring communities. Although it is unlikely that community concerns are the main cause of the project delays, it does appear that the government still has some significant community relations issues to resolve.
-
Gary explains that, “too often, projects suffer from an ‘original sin’ – affected communities were not adequately consulted prior to the investment decision and had little say about how and whether these projects were developed.”
- ...1 more annotation...
Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, The New Oil Wars in Iraq | TomDispatch - 0 views
-
It was a moment of remarkable contradictions. Obama managed, for example, to warn against “mission creep” even as he was laying out what could only be described as mission creep. Earlier that week, he had notified Congress that 275 troops would be sent to Iraq, largely to defend the vast U.S. embassy in Baghdad, once an almost three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar symbol of imperial hubris, now a white elephant of the first order. A hundred more military personnel were to be moved into the region for backup.
-
In tandem with the military moves, the president and his national security team, perhaps reflecting through a glass darkly the “democracy agenda” of the Bush era, also seemed to have dipped their fingers in purple ink. They were reportedly pressuring Iraqi politicians to dump Prime Minister Maliki and appoint a “unity” government to fight the war they want. (Adding to the farcical nature of the moment, one name raised for Maliki’s position was Ahmed Chalabi, once the darling of Bush-era officials and their choice for that same post.)
-
There is, however, no way that an American intervention won’t be viewed as a move to back the Shia side in an incipient set of civil wars, as even retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus warned last week.
- ...6 more annotations...
Pulling A Fast-One on Transparency | The Con - 0 views
-
Until the September 11th 2001 attacks in New York City, corporations could vie for lucrative concessions and shroud their payoffs into the offshore secret accounts of politicians and other key players. But more open banking practices instituted worldwide in the fight against terrorism have made secret bank accounts difficult to hide.
-
Companies and governments are now resorting to “in-kind payments” to disguise these backhanders. For instance, leasing office space from an individual with the right political connections at a rate higher than the prevailing market price is a common way of making an in-kind payment. Another practice is to recruit relatives or friends of an influential and politically- connected individual and retain them on payrolls as “facilitators” or “consultants” without clearly-defined responsibilities. Inflating costs for replacing equipment and parts is another fraudulent practice.
-
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and has decades of experience. But it still relies on oil companies to determine the volume of oil produced and shipped out of its territory.
« First
‹ Previous
181 - 190 of 190
Showing 20▼ items per page