On May 3, 2016, Nigeria’s Vice President revealed that following recent investigations, it was found that instead of $5.5 billion previously announced, it is $15 billion that has been embezzled under government of Goodluck Jonathan, as false security expenses. In November 2015, on order of President Muhamady Buhary the court arrested Samba Dasuki, former National Security Advisor as...

Mining firm Kogi Iron completed tests to determine the smelting characteristics of its Agbaja iron project and is about to finalize definitive feasibility study by the end of June. Also, the firm planned to build an initial mining operation alongside a 250 000 t/yr steel product processing plant at Agbaja. It had in plan to process 5 million tons a year in the long term. The plant should...

Board’s president of United Bank of Africa (UBA), Tony Elumelu revealed that the group was getting ready to launch a new expansion phase in Africa, Nigeria excluded, which should bring to 25 its number of offices which is currently at 18. “We wish to become the leader in terms of financial services in Africa,” Mr Elumelu told journalists in Lagos. Despite Nigeria being UBA’s main...

Senegal and USA signed cooperation agreements allowing American military troops to rapidly dispatch across the West African nation in the event of a terrorist attack or an epidemic outbreak, such as in the case of Ebola in 2014. These agreements are inked in a context where Senegal’s forces are in alert after terrorists attacked Mali, Burkina Faso and most recently Cote d’Ivoire. American...

To deal with the pressure that Mobile Money services put on their market share, banks in Kenya decided to launch in April 2016 the “Real Time Interbank Switch” project. This system should allow money transfers from one account to another across banks, from mobile. However, deadline for launching was missed, not for the first time. Truly, this system was to be launched in November 2015 without...

Tullow Oil on Wednesday announced that production has recommenced at its offshore Jubilee field in Ghana, pumping 30,000 bpd. Production from the field was delayed at the start of this year as a result of a technical problem involving a damaged turret bearing. According to the Managing Director of Tullow Oil in Ghana, Charles Darku (photo), the company is making plans for three possible fixes...

Spectrum on Wednesday announced that it has concluded its 2D seismic program offshore south Somalia after it acquired 20,582.75 line km of data. The company had signed a Multi-client master co-operation contract with the Federal Government of Somalia in September last year to secure about 28,000 km of long offset 2D seismic data offshore Somalia. According to the Multi-Client seismic data...

Anadarko in its operational update on asset in Ivory Coast announced that its first horizontal deepwater well, Paon-5A in Block CI-103, came across about 100 net feet of vertical oil pay. The company revealed that it will drill the Paon-3AR sidetrack well in Q2, to be followed by a drillstem and interference testing program as it plans to move the Paon find toward commerciality. According to...

Cobalt International in its operational update on asset offshore Angola announced that after the completion of drilling operations, the Zalophus-1 pre-salt exploration well in Block 20 discovered significant condensate and gas. This is the company’s sixth pre-salt find offshore Angola and its third discovery on Block 20 in Angola. According to Cobalt, the Petroserv Catarina rig used in...

After several failed attempts to achieve first oil, the Aje field situated within Block OML 113, offshore Lagos, Nigeria has finally achieved its first oil. This is coming after Panoro Energy announced last month that the last assembling procedures were ongoing with the aim of starting production soon. Subsea installation operations had been ongoing at the Aje field since January 2016 and was...