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Arabica Robusta

BIC's new handbook for advocacy on extractive industry revenues | Bank Information Cent... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3836.aspx

bic civil development extractive finance imf industry international movements petroleum social society

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08
     
    The Handbook is intended as a tool for civil society organizations, journalists and other members of the public interested in learning more about transparency and fiscal management in the natural resource sectors. It distills and builds upon information contained in the IMF's document, with a focus on areas especially pertinent for civil society groups seeking to better understand how extractive industry (EI) sectors are managed. The Handbook aims to help civil society groups hold governments and private companies accountable for the exploitation of natural resources in their country.[2] In producing this Handbook, BIC is not endorsing the extractive industries or asserting that improved transparency, alone, would address the myriad social, environmental and economic impacts associated with natural resource exploitation. Rather, this document aims to provide citizens in resource-rich countries with one more tool to strengthen their efforts to hold industry actors and governments accountable.
Arabica Robusta

Idku - a neglected town stands up against environmental degradation | Egyptian Initiati... - 0 views

eipr.org/...1746

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource egypt

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Talking to Idku locals, their pride in their hometown's past glory is  hard to miss - “Idku used to be Egypt’s food basket”, they tell me. But so is the bitterness over its lost potential; the neglect, violations, and loss of their livelihoods, “Idku is an orphan town no one cares about”.
  • These factors are further confounded by evident climate change impacts: the community’s resilience to the longer and stronger seasonal wave surges is weakened by the uncontrolled raking of Idku’s sand dunes (now almost completely removed) by big-business construction contractors, changing the coastal topography and depriving the area of a natural shoreline barrier.
  • Shifting seasons have aggravated the impacts of already declining fish populations on the vulnerable fishermen, diminishing the catch yield and fish variety. Degraded farmland is suffering from increasing salination, with 95% of the famed guava orchards seriously damaged.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Yet Idku remains defiant, even in the face of the Egyptian Liquefied Natural Gas  Project, a massive natural gas liquefaction facility on the nearby beach. The oil operations are run by two joint ventures Rashpetco and Burullus, whose shareholders include the British BG, Malaysian PETRONAS, French Gaz de France,  and the Egyptian state companies EGAS and EGPC .
  • Unfortunately, BP has not given up completely. Instead of recognising that it's not wanted, the company has moved to a new location futher east along the coast. Now the struggle moves to Mtubas  in Kafr elSheikh, the new proposed site for BP’s gas plant.
  • To day, these demands remain unmet. So when British Petroleum eyed Idku for an onshore natural gas processing plant, the community took matters into its own hand: it mobilized to stand up against the proposed project. Roads were blocked, a sit-in occupied the construction site, BP's office was raided and popular assemblies took place in the street. The organised local campaigning and resistance by the Idku community managed to halt BP’s plans.
Arabica Robusta

Publish What You Pay - 0 views

www.publishwhatyoupay.org/...index.shtml

csr industry ngos petroleum pwyp transparency

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08
     
    The Publish What You Pay coalition of over 300 NGOs worldwide calls for the mandatory disclosure of the payments made by oil, gas and mining companies to all governments for the extraction of natural resources. The coalition also calls on resource-rich developing country governments to publish full details on revenues. This is a necessary first step towards a more accountable system for the management of natural resource revenues.
anonymous

The Haynesville Shale Formation. Maps and News. - 0 views

ehelpfulltips.com

haynesville shale formation map information natural gas

shared by anonymous on 11 May 09 - Cached
  • anonymous on 11 May 09
     
    Information on the Haynesville Shale Formation, a huge reserve of natural gas located in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Haynesville Shale Maps and information.
Arabica Robusta

ECUADOR: Fate of Untapped Oil Hangs in the Balance - of Trust Fund - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

ipsnews.net/news.asp

shared by Arabica Robusta on 17 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • The initiative for not extracting the oil was originally proposed 20 years ago by Fundación Natura, the largest environmental organisation in Ecuador, and has since been supported by a number of environmental and indigenous groups defending the Yasuní National Park and its buffer zone, where the oilfields are located.
  • But there are strong supporters for drilling, like the deputy minister of non-renewable natural resources and former manager of the state oil firm Petroecuador, Carlos Pareja, and President Correa himself has talked extensively about "Plan B".
  • Meanwhile, the German government said it will not support the Yasuní-ITT initiative, because the precedent might be imitated by other countries. The announcement came as very bad news for the initiative.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Correa cheerfully replied that he would continue to talk about "Plan B" because his main concern is the future of Ecuadorians, and if international cooperation is not forthcoming he will have to authorise it. In the circumstances, it appears increasingly unlikely that the oil under the Yasuní nature reserve will remain untapped for long.
  • The proposal is for Ecuador to forego extracting the oil, in return for the international community contributing 50 percent of the cost of the greenhouse gas emissions that would be saved by not extracting and burning the oil – at least 3.6 billion dollars.
Arabica Robusta

West using terror to plunder oil resources of Nigeria | nsnbc - 0 views

nsnbc.wordpress.com/...under-oil-resources-of-nigeria

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • With a population of 160 million, Nigeria is the known as the “giant of Africa”. In addition to crude oil, Nigeria has also the biggest reserves of natural gas among Sub-Saharan nations. Western energy companies are gearing up to tap this wealth even further in the coming years. Balkanising the country into North-South entities would undermine the central government in Abuja and bolster exploitation by these corporations.
  • However, some Nigerian analysts believe that the organization is being used by powerful external forces as a conduit for destabilizing Nigeria. Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode says: “The upshot of this latest massacre is to destabilize the state of Nigeria by sowing sectarian divisions among the population. The killers may have been Boko Haram operatives, but Boko Haram is a proxy organization working on behalf of foreign powers.”
  • Campbell reiterated the significant observation: “The Mubi atrocity will feed a popular perception that the government can no longer ensure security in large parts of the country.”
Arabica Robusta

PressTV - West using terror to plunder oil resources of Nigeria - 0 views

presstv.com/...-terror-to-destabilize-nigeria

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Balkanising the country into North-South entities would undermine the central government in Abuja and bolster exploitation by these corporations.
  • Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode says: “The upshot of this latest massacre is to destabilize the state of Nigeria by sowing sectarian divisions among the population. The killers may have been Boko Haram operatives, but Boko Haram is a proxy organization working on behalf of foreign powers.”
  • Campbell reiterated the significant observation: “The Mubi atrocity will feed a popular perception that the government can no longer ensure security in large parts of the country.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • However, the fragmentation of Nigeria would undermine the political base of the central government. Nigeria’s political class has an unenviable reputation for institutionalized corruption and graft. Those flaws would most probably intensify in splintered and weakened political administrations. In that scenario, the powerful Western oil companies stand to gain by extracting even more favorable terms for oil production.
  • Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode is convinced that Britain, France and Israel have also stepped up covert military involvement in Nigeria over the same period.
  • The same Western objective of fracturing, balkanising and weakening countries is also seen to be playing out in Sudan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria. Nigeria’s oil and gas riches and its position as a natural leader of African nations underscores the Western objective with regard to West Africa.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12
       
      Frynas, citing Ahmad Khan, makes the same point in his work on instability and corporate exploitation in Nigeria.
Arabica Robusta

Kenya, Oil and Populism: Learning from Germany | Global Policy Journal - Practitioner, ... - 0 views

www.globalpolicyjournal.com/...-and-populism-learning-germany

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource kenya

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Unlikely as it may seem, Africa can learn from Germany: Germany is the best managed economy in Europe. Of course, it does not have natural resources, and so its economic management addresses entirely different issues. However, the political foundations for Germany’s success can be generalized beyond the particularities of economic policies. Germany is today the best-run economy in Europe because it used to be the worst. Three generations ago, Germany collapsed into hyperinflation. From that searing experience Germans too emerged with that inchoate sense of ‘never again’. The German genius was to harness those sentiments into practical measures.
  • The most important and remarkable step taken by Germany was the third. The sentiment of ‘never again’ was turned into a critical mass of ordinary citizens who understood the economic issues underlying hyperinflation sufficiently to support the new rules and institutions. Collectively, these citizens provided the political defences that made the rules and institutions robust to the pressures for dysfunctional policy choices: this has persisted for three generations.
  • Political leaders self-flatteringly see their role as that of taking decisions. In fact, in large part they should leave decisions to their technocrats who are better informed. But only leaders, not their technocrats, can communicate with citizens, presenting a narrative of responsibility towards the next generation in managing good fortune.
Arabica Robusta

Pan-African News Wire: Western Oil Exploration Could Further Destabilize Somalia - 0 views

panafricannews.blogspot.com/...exploration-could-further.html

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource somalia

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • In the U.N. Monitoring Group’s latest annual report to the Security Council’s sanctions committee on Somalia and Eritrea, the experts said the Somali constitution gives considerable autonomy to regional governments to enter commercial oil deals.But a petroleum law that has not yet been adopted by the country’s parliament but is being invoked by federal officials in the capital Mogadishu says that the central government can distribute natural resources.“These inconsistencies, unless resolved, may lead to increased political conflict between federal and regional governments that risk exacerbating clan divisions and therefore threaten peace and security,” the experts group said in an annex to its annual report, which was seen by Reuters.
  • “It is alarming that regional security forces and armed groups may clash to protect and further Western-based oil companies interests,” it said.
  • The U.N. experts also expressed concern about a clash between a longstanding bid by Norway to urge Somalia to implement an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off its coast with commercial interests by a Norwegian oil company.
Arabica Robusta

Oil companies in emerging markets: Safe sex in Nigeria | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...ni-win-huge-nigerian-oil-block

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Malabu then sued the government. After much legal wrangling, they reached a deal in 2006 that reinstated the firm as the block’s owner. This caught Shell unawares, even though it had conducted extensive due diligence and had a keen understanding of the Nigerian operating climate thanks to its long and often bumpy history in the country. It responded by launching various legal actions, including taking the government to the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.
  • Tom Mayne of Global Witness, an NGO, has followed the case closely; he believes things were structured this way so that Shell and ENI could obscure their deal with Malabu by inserting a layer between them. Mr Agaev, Malabu’s former fixer, lends weight to this interpretation. It was, he says, structured to be a “safe-sex transaction”, with the government acting as a “condom” between the buyers and seller.
  • Shell and ENI reject the suggestion that their joint purchase was a thinly disguised transaction with a dodgy brass-plate company. Shell says it made payments to the Nigerian government only and that it has acted at all times in accordance with Nigerian law. It previously said it had “not acted in any way that is outside normal global industry practice”. ENI says its payments to the government “were made in a transparent manner through an escrow arrangement with a major international bank”. That bank was JPMorgan Chase. A Lebanese bank had earlier declined to handle the payments, it emerged in court.
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  • The companies’ claim that they bought the block from the state, not Malabu, is disingenuous, says Mr Mayne of Global Witness. It is also contradicted by Nigeria’s attorney-general, Mohammed Bello Adoke, who told a parliamentary committee last July that the companies “agreed to pay Malabu”, with the government acting as an “obligor” and “facilitator.”
  • The EFCC’s report states: “Investigations conducted so far reveal a cloudy scene associated with fraudulent dealings. A prima facie case of conspiracy, breach of trust, theft anmd [sic] money laundering can be established against some real and artificial persons.” Officially, the EFCC’s investigation is still open, but a source familiar with it says that its sleuths have been discouraged by higher-ups from moving forward. However, other countries’ fraudbusters have taken an interest. At least one of the parties involved in the oil-block sale has been contacted by America’s Department of Justice.
  • The saga is a striking example of an ethical dilemma that is growing more acute for international oil companies. They are desperate to replace their shrinking reserves with new finds, but many of the most attractive fields are in unstable or poorly governed places.
  • Mr Hughes argues that when foreign companies turn a blind eye to questionable aspects of a deal, it can sometimes benefit developing countries with natural resources. The publicly traded oil majors are, on balance, a force for good, raising overall standards of behaviour by trying to operate as cleanly as possible in most circumstances, he says; better that than leaving the field to less scrupulous operators.
  • Global Witness prefers to see the OPL245 affair as “a lesson in corruption” that demonstrates how important it is for rich-world governments to press on with transparency initiatives
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Leave new oil in the soil in Africa - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...66289

industry petroleum development oil international extractive nigeria transparency curse resource

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The desire to capture more oil reserves is driving exploration and development of oil and gas fields in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, the Comoros, Seychelles and the coast of Durban in South Africa.
  • The National oil spill detection and response agency (NOSDRA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have identified over 2,000 spill sites that need to be remediated. Some of these spills happened over 40 years ago. The Ebubu spill that occurred in 1970, has not been cleaned up and Shell, the company implicated in the disaster, is vigorously appealing a judgement of a federal high court which ordered it to pay US$40 million compensation as at 2001.[3]
  • Even though Ikiogha is the government bureaucrat in charge of penalising Shell for the spill and signing off on the cleanup, he is also the contractor hired by Shell to do the cleanup… His cleanup operation consists of four shirtless men scooping oil from the surface of the polluted river with Frisbees… he claims that most of the oil had earlier been removed with absorbent foam and blankets.’[5]
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
       
      Kenneth Feinburg.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The idea of leaving oil in the ground within the Yasuni forest was taken up in far away Ecuador by no less than the government of the country itself and is receiving widespread acceptance.
  • The world’s ecosystem is one and we have merely scratched the surface in understanding the intricate interconnectedness of nature at different levels. It is therefore short sighted to continue the reckless expansion of drilling around the world because in the long run the revenue we may earn today from oil extraction would not be sufficient to adequately return our environment to what it was before extraction when incidents like these occur.
  • We must begin by acknowledging that the sensible use of our ecosystem has the capacity in the long-term to provide much more benefits and revenue than oil can ever provide. We must individually and consciously take up the responsibility of drastically reducing our use of oil and its by-products. We must also set up international tribunals that would try entities and individuals for their role in destroying the ecosystem. But more importantly we must begin to have the consciousness and think along the lines of building capacities within our communities to ensure as much as possible that the role of oil our energy matrix becomes inconsequential by investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.
Arabica Robusta

Ghana Crude Oil - Cocoa Curse And Gold Curse | Feature Article 2010-12-26 - 0 views

www.ghanaweb.com/...artikel.php

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource ghana

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • The question to Ghana, Cameroon,Chad, Sudan, Angola, Gabon is, What did you do with your natural resources and other producct to better your people before and after oil discovery and the answer is nothing - zero -nil
  • Corruption i is endemic in Ghana despite their showing good face and conducting good election. Corruption is a big problem in Ghana, Example is the recent world cup Tournamant in South Africa, when Ghananian Players did quite well, but as they came back to Ghana, corrupt officials in Ghananian Football Association stole the world cup players money (fees) and some of the players have not been paid in full till today, and Ghana footbal body has been suspened by the Government, and investigation is on going and FIFA has suspended Ghana from International competition for corrupt practices.
  • Ghana cannot compare to Nigeria in any tangible thing now or in the near future, yes they have been conducting good elections and thats its for a small poor country, and Ghanaians and their leaders should stop camparing with Nigeria what they have not been able to do with cocoa and Gold.*
Arabica Robusta

Ghana's New Oil Wealth May Trigger Borrowing Spree - BusinessWeek - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...y-trigger-borrowing-spree.html

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse ghana

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Ghanaian President John Atta Mills says the country will learn from the mistakes of other African oil producers and save some of the revenue for future generations after production starts today. Government agreements to borrow more than $14 billion say otherwise.
  • “We must give thanks to God for giving us this natural asset,” Mills said after opening a tap to release oil aboard a storage ship today. “It means we are assuming very serious responsibilities. Those of us in leadership positions must ensure oil is a blessing is not a curse.”
  • Ghana has been overspending since the oil was discovered in 2007, with the government posting a fiscal deficit in excess of 5 percent of GDP in each of the past three years.
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  • Ghana has a good track record, after cutting hunger by 75 percent between 1990 and 2004 and maintaining one of Africa’s most stable democracies in the past 20 years. Buoyed by a burgeoning financial sector and record prices for cocoa and gold, its two largest exports, growth has averaged more than 5.5 percent over the past decade.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Leaving oil in the soil - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...75430

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource south africa

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Although the area contains the world's largest tiger reserve, according to reporter Thomas Maung Shwe of Mizzima news service, ‘the Burmese regime has encouraged logging, gold mining, large scale farms and the building of factories inside’. As the scandal grew, Silver Wave denied what its own press release had announced, but conceded it would drill near the reserve.
  • A company this dastardly is a high risk, and to prove the point, Silver Wave's environmental impact document includes a description of the notorious Agulhas Current, which begins at the Mozambique border: ‘Compared to other western boundary currents the Agulhas Current adjacent to southern Africa's East Coast exhibits a remarkable stability.’ Huh? In reality, the Natal Pulse races down the Agulhas a half-dozen times each year, pushing 20km per day. It is one reason Durban's coastline hosts more than 50 major ship carcasses. Creating havoc further south on the Wild Coast, the Pulse contributes to the rouge waves that have sunk 1,000 more vessels in what is considered one of the world's most dangerous shipping corridors.
  • Daily, poisons are flared onto thousands of neighbouring residents. The Indian, coloured and African communities suffer the world's highest-ever recorded asthma rate in a school (52 per cent of kids), as Settlers Primary sits next to the country's largest paper mill (Mondi) and between two refineries: one run by Engen, Chevron and Total; and the other, called Sapref, by BP, Shell and Thebe Investments. Sapref's worst leak so far was 1.5 million litres into the Bluff Nature Reserve and adjoining residences in 2001.
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  • Venezuelan dirty crude is akin to Canadian tar sands, and hopefully sense will prevail in Caracas.
  • In Quito and Neuva Rocafuerte deep in the Amazon last week, I witnessed the most advanced eco-social battle for a nation's hearts-and-minds underway anywhere, with the extraordinary NGO Accion Ecologica insisting that Correa's grudging government leaves the oil in Yasuni National Park's soil. Because he was trained in neoclassical economics and hasn't quite recovered, Correa favours selling Yasuni forests on the carbon markets, which progressive ecologists reject in principle.
Arabica Robusta

Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, The New Oil Wars in Iraq | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...tz%2C_the_new_oil_wars_in_iraq

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource iraq us intervention

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • 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...
  • Fortunately, sociologist Michael Schwartz, an old-time TomDispatch regular, is back after a long absence to remind us of The One Fact in Iraq, the one we should never forget. Tom
  • Under the seething ocean of Sunni discontent lies a factor that is being ignored. The insurgents are not only in a struggle against what they see as oppression by a largely Shiite government in Baghdad and its security forces, but also over who will control and benefit from what Maliki -- speaking for most of his constituents -- told the Wall Street Journal is Iraq’s “national patrimony.”
  • When, in 2009, the Obama administration first began withdrawing U.S. combat troops, Iraqis everywhere -- but especially in Sunni areas -- faced up to 60% unemployment, sporadic electrical service, poisoned water systems, episodic education, a dysfunctional medical system, and a lack of viable public or private transportation. Few Westerners remember that, in 2010, Maliki based his election campaign on a promise to remedy these problems by -- that figure again -- increasing oil production to six million barrels per day.
  • none of this oil wealth trickled down to the grassroots, especially in Sunni areas of the country where signs of reconstruction, economic development, restored services, or jobs were hard to discern. Instead, the vast new revenues disappeared into the recesses of a government ranked by Transparency International as the seventh most corrupt on the planet.
  • In a rare moment of ironic insight, Time magazine concluded its coverage of the F-16 purchase with this comment: “The good news is the deal will likely keep Lockheed’s F-16 plant in Fort Worth running perhaps a year longer. The bad news is that only 70% of Iraqis have access to clean water, and only 25% have clean sanitation.”
  • With conditions worsening, Sunni communities only became more insistent, supplementing their petitions and demonstrations with sit-ins at government offices, road blockades, and Tahrir Square-type occupations of public spaces. Maliki’s responses also escalated to arresting the political messengers, dispersing demonstrations, and, in a key moment in 2013, “killing dozens” of protestors when his “security forces opened fire on a Sunni protest camp.” This repression and the continued frustration of local demands helped regenerate the insurgencies that had been the backbone of the Sunni resistance during the American occupation. Once lethal violence began to be applied by government forces, guerrilla attacks became common in the areas north and west of Baghdad that the U.S. occupiers had labeled “the Sunni triangle.”
Arabica Robusta

Big Oil's sleazy Africa secrets: How American companies and super-rich exploit natural ... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...rich_exploit_natural_resources

corporate social responsibility csr extractive industries oil angola us intervention

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 May 17 - No Cached
  • Luanda consistently ranks at the top of surveys of the world’s most expensive cities for expatriates, ahead of Singapore, Tokyo, and Zurich. In glistening five-star hotels like the one beside Chicala, an unspectacular sandwich costs $30. The monthly rent for a top-end unfurnished three-bedroom house is $15,000.
  • The railways, the hotels, the growth rates, and the champagne all flow from the oil that lies under Angola’s soils and seabed. So does the fear.In 1966 Gulf Oil, a US oil company that ranked among the so-called seven sisters that then dominated the industry, discovered prodigious reserves of crude in Cabinda, an enclave separated from the rest of Angola by a sliver of its neighbor, Congo.
  • “When the MPLA dropped its Marxist garb at the beginning of the 1990s,” writes Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, an authority on Angola, “the ruling elite enthusiastically converted to crony capitalism.” The court of the president—a few hundred families known as the Futungo, after Futungo de Belas, the old presidential palace— embarked on “the privatization of power.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • the family of José Eduardo dos Santos, the party’s Soviet-trained leader who assumed the presidency in 1979, took personal ownership of Angola’s riches. Isabel dos Santos, the president’s daughter, amassed interests from banking to television in Angola and Portugal. In January 2013 Forbes magazine named her Africa’s first female billionaire.
  • Vicente built Sonangol into a formidable operation. He drove hard bargains with the oil majors that have spent tens of billions of dollars developing Angola’s offshore oilfields, among them BP of the UK and Chevron and ExxonMobil of the United States. Despite the tough negotiations, Angola dazzled the majors and their executives respected Vicente. “Angola is for us a land of success,” said Jacques Marraud des Grottes, head of African exploration and production for Total of France, which pumped more of the country’s crude than anyone else.
  • Sonangol awarded itself stakes in oil ventures operated by foreign companies and used the revenues to push its tentacles into every corner of the domestic economy: property, health care, banking, aviation. It even has a professional football team
  • Oil accounts for 98 percent of Angola’s exports and about three-quarters of the government’s income. It is also the lifeblood of the Futungo. When the International Monetary Fund examined Angola’s national accounts in 2011, it found that between 2007 and 2010 $32 billion had gone missing, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of each of forty-three African countries and equivalent to one in every four dollars that the Angolan economy generates annually. Most of the missing money could be traced to off-the-books spending by Sonangol; $4.2 billion was completely unaccounted  for.
  • For Joe Bryant, Cobalt’s founding chairman and chief executive, a punt based on prehistoric geology appeared to have paid off spectacularly. A hundred million years ago, before tectonic shifts tore them apart, the Americas and Africa had been a single landmass—the two shores of the southern Atlantic resemble one another closely. In 2006 oil companies had pierced the thick layer of salt under the Brazilian seabed and found a load of crude. An analogous salt layer stretched out from Angola. Bryant and his geologists wondered whether the same treasure might lie beneath the Angolan salt layer.
  • There was just one snag. What Cobalt had not revealed—indeed, what the company maintains it did not know—was that three of the most powerful men in Angola owned secret stakes in its partner, Nazaki Oil and Gáz. One of them was Manuel Vicente. As the boss of Sonangol at the time of Cobalt’s deal, he oversaw the award of oil concessions and the terms of the contracts.
  • A long-neglected 1977 statute prohibits American companies from participating in the privatization of power in far-off lands. Updated in 1998, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime for a company that has operations in the United States to pay or offer money or anything of value to foreign officials to win business. It covers both companies themselves and their officers. For years after it was passed the FCPA was more of a laudable ideal than a law with teeth. However, from the late-2000s the agencies that were supposed to enforce it—the Department of Justice, which brings criminal cases, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the stock market regulator, which handles civil cases—started to do so with gusto. They went after some big names, including BAE Systems, Royal Dutch Shell, and a former subsidiary of Halliburton called Kellogg Brown & Root.
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