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The secessionist state of Somaliland has signed a production sharing agreement with DNO, a Norwegian oil and gas company.

Standing between Shell and its prize was Dan Etete, whose company acquired the rights to OPL 245 for a tiny sum while he was oil minister of Nigeria. He was later convicted of money laundering in a different case. Shell and the Italian oil company ENI eventually acquired OPL 245 in 2011 - by paying $1.3bn to the Nigerian government. That's more than the entire health budget of Nigeria but it didn't get spent on public services.

The government promptly passed on more than $1bn of the money to a company called Malabu, which was controlled by Dan Etete. Emails obtained by anti-corruption charities Global Witness and Finance Uncovered, and seen by the BBC, show that Shell representatives were negotiating with Etete for a year before the deal was finalised.

Shell also had good reason to suspect that hundreds of millions would end up in the pockets of Nigerian politicians including the former President Goodluck Jonathan.In an email from July, the same Shell employee says Etete's negotiating strategy is "clearly an attempt to deliver significant revenues to GLJ [Goodluck Jonathan] as part of any transaction."

What a coincidence: the world’s first major oil well, Empire, was established in 1861, in Pennsylvania, the same year the American Civil War began. With black liquid slaves gushing from the ground, there was less of a need to enslave black (or any other) humans, at least not so overtly. The new black slaves are also much more powerful, flexible, storable, transportable and tradable. Cheaper to maintain, they also don’t revolt.

Concurrent with the increase in oil and the actual wealth that it brought, we’ve also witnessed an explosion of magical or illusory wealth, in the form of images. It began with the invention of photography in the mid-19th century, just before the Empire oil well and American Civil War. With photos, then moving images, now on television, desktop, laptop, cellphone and Ipad, any man can own so much with his eyes.

Though the US has made so much noise about Tibet, it never mentions Manipur, a sovereign land invaded by an ally. The state will rob and murder, then grant you symbolic victories, such as a Martin Luther King Boulevard slicing through each ghetto, but enough of token bones tossed under the table. It’s time to overturn that table.

The Commissioner, who charged oil companies operating in the state and their host communities to see themselves as development partners, assured the host communities to OML 66 that government would ensure that a thorough environmental impact assessment (EIA) is carried out by the oil company before commencement of work in the area.

Another article, How Overpriced is Ghana’s Jubilee Field Expansion Project?, questions the projected cost of the Jubilee expansion. The higher the costs, the lower the revenues for Ghana. “It is important to note,” the article states, “that the more money that is spent on the project the longer it takes for the field to be profitable, the lower the taxes Ghana can collect, and the longer it takes for even those meagre taxes to show up.” Besides providing an important public service, the IMANI articles have also prompted a response from the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation.  You can read the lengthy GNPC press release on Ghana Oil Watch: Recent Media Discussions on GNPC and Jubilee Oil. The press release refutes IMANI’s allegations and IMANI has since issued a final statement backing up the think tank’s original estimates and statements.

Rather uncharacteristic of the secretive organisation, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) finally issued a press statement to respond to concerns raised by civil society about Ghana’s underperforming oil industry. While the GNPC is to be commended for its increasing responsiveness and transparency … The truth is that the information the GNPC has now supplied to inform the public debate about Ghana’s oil sector would not have received broad coverage had IMANI not engaged in strong advocacy to demand such information.

On a somewhat related note, a U.S. law firm has announced it investigation of potential claims against KOSMOS Energy, one of the Jubilee partners: The investigation concerns allegations that the Registration Statement and Prospectus issued in connection with the Company’s initial public offering (the “IPO”) were materially false and misleading and misrepresented or failed to disclose that:

The allegation of the bribery blew open after former President Olusegun Obasanjo alleged that there were thieves and armed robbers in the National Assembly and state legislative houses, and the Speaker of the House Hon. Aminu Tambuwal travelled to the former president’s Ota residence to seek audience with him over the statement.

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.

The Bowoto case is the legal reaction to Chevron’s role in a 1998 protest by Nigerian community activists in the Niger Delta. The unarmed demonstrators boarded an oil platform and adjacent barge, property of subsidiary Chevron Nigeria Ltd, in protest over the environmental and economic damage caused by oil production in the region. The activists were attacked on 28 May by Nigerian authorities ferried to the floating protest by the oil corporation. Two men were killed and several more protestors injured. Three others claim detention and torture.

After nearly 10 years of pre-trial motions wherein many claims were dropped by a pre-trial judge, the case finally debuted in trial in October 2008 and a decision was handed down on 1 December the same year. The nine-bench jury decided in favour of Chevron, clearing the corporation of any liability under the various claims. It was a defendant’s victory, but civil society groups and legal experts still label the case a milestone in advancing corporate accountability.

The Bowoto case is the first time the multinational magnate Chevron USA Inc. has been successfully taken to a US court for the actions of an overseas subsidiary. ‘Chevron has a very intricate structure, used in part to try and shield itself from liability,’ Simons said. The case has effectively scrapped this corporate strategy.

A FEDERAL High Court, yesterday, awarded N15.4billion as special and punitive damages against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, SPDC, in favour of Ejama-Ebubu community in Tai Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State for an oil spill that occurred in 1970.

Justice Buba in his judgment said: “This is a 2001 matter that has a chequered history. The plaintiffs by their paragraph 32 of the amended statement of claims, jointly and severally claimed against the defendants, special damages of N1.772billion, allowing for interest for delayed payment for five years from 1996 at a modest mean Central Bank of Nigeria deregulated rate for that volume at 25 per cent per annum, totaling N5.4billion.

The World Bank Board today approved a credit of US$38 million to the Government of Ghana for implementation of an Oil and Gas Capacity Building Project.

Ghana and its partners in the Jubilee field have worked hard to bring it into production in barely three years a record time by industry standards but institutional development for sector management by the state and education and skills development face significant challenges.

Given the strategic role civil society is expected to play in promoting accountability and community participation, an additional grant of US$2 million is being provided under the Banks Governance Partnership Facility (GPF) to support a wide range of activities to be championed and implemented by civil society and community based organizations.

The case stems from oil pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest, but Chevron does not operate there and has no significant assets in the country. It was Texaco, which Chevron acquired in a merger in 2001, that was accused of widespread environmental damage before pulling out of Ecuador in the early 1990s.

Chevron has much larger operations elsewhere in Latin America, and the plaintiffs’ strategy of pursuing the company across the region could open a contentious new phase in the case — one that would test Ecuador’s political ties with its neighbors and involve some of Washington’s most prominent lobbyists and lawyers.

Advisers to the plaintiffs said Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela would be obvious candidates to pursue Chevron assets, but they acknowledged it would not be easy. Venezuela, for instance, is a close Ecuadorean ally and its president, Hugo Chávez, is a frequent critic of the United States. But Chevron has extensive operations in Venezuela and enjoys warmer ties with Mr. Chávez’s government than just about any other American company.

This is the latest withdrawal of oil majors from Uganda and other 20 African countries, and is part of the growing trend of shifting away from retail and marketing to exploration and production, where returns on investments are high.

“We are reviewing our business globally and shall end up with a downstream footprint in larger markets with bigger profits because small markets are not profitable,” Kyayonka observed.

“The issue is about utilisation of capital. We have a pot of money from the shareholders and public funds from which they expect returns on their investments,” Kyayonka stated. “As managers, we have to think of where the dividends come from, and that is in exploration and production.”

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.

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.

But a Shell Nigeria spokesman, Mr. Precious Okolobo, said the company accepted responsibility for the two deeply regrettable operational spills in Bodo and was fully committed to ensuring clean-up but that since 2015, the Bodo community of Rivers State has failed to permit access by contractors appointed to carry out the clean-up.

Chairperson of BMI, Inemo Samiama, to whom Holtzman addressed the letter, said in a statement that BMI had carried out Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Technique (SCAT) as recommended by the UNEP representative in the BMI, Dr. David Little, so as to form judgments on the best remedial methods applicable to each grid at individual sites. According to Samiama, the results of the pre-SCAT and main SCAT as issued by the SCAT team leader, Dr. Erich Gundlach, had confirmed areas of pollution and the need for clean-up but the results did not raise new concerns because they were not different from existing observations from earlier reports.

Shell had accepted liability for the 2008 and 2009 oil spills, and in 2015, agreed to pay £55m to the Bodo community for losses caused by the spills. UNEP had in 2011 published a damning report anticipating that it would take up to 30 years to clean the Niger Delta from oil spills, caused by theft and operational failures.