The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Nigerian Security Agencies have made a solemn promise to deploy drone technology in order to stem crude and petroleum products theft across the country. The Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu stated this during a courtesy visit to the Chief of Defense Staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin in the Defence...

In August Egypt paid foreign oil companies $600 million in arrears and still owes them $2.9 billion, according to the petroleum minister. Sherif Ismail (photo) told the Cairo post that the country aims to lower the amount of arrears it owes foreign oil companies to $2.5 billion by the end of 2015. Delays in payments to foreign companies had discouraged investment in Egypt’s...

A new Bissau-Guinean government led by Prime Minister Baciro Dja was formed on 7th September, after a month of crisis prompted by a power struggle between the previous head of government Domingos Simoes Pereira and President José Mario Vaz. The formation of a new government was made possible through an agreement with the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), second largest party in Parliament with 41...

Spectrum ASA said it has acquired a multi-client master co-operation agreement with the federal government of Somalia for a 2D seismic data acquisition. The agreement which allows Spectrum ASA to acquire approximately 28,000 km of long offset 2D seismic data offshore south Somalia, in the Indian Ocean, has been specifically designed to complement 20,000 km of existing seismic that was acquired...

South Africa has said oil imports from Iran will resume on the 10th of September, if sanctions were lifted as was agreed in July, a senior government official told Engineering news. Iran used to be South Africa’s  biggest oil supplier, which boasts of the continent's most industrialized economy and was also its second-biggest consumer of crude oil, importing some 380 000...

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has announced that the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Limited (NDPRL) has won the “2015 Global Gas Flare Reduction Excellence Award. DPR said the achievement came at a time the company is preparing to celebrate the anniversary of its 10 years of production in the oil & gas sector, stating that the award was a further verification of Nigeria’s...

Danish Arla Foods announced the creation of two joint ventures in West Africa, in Nigeria and Senegal. Joint company Arly Senegal SA, launched with the Attieh conglomerate which holds 25% of shares, is to enable Arla gain foothold in the country, with a target of 32 million Euros in revenues by 2020. In Nigeria however, the aim of the company is to triple its revenues to 240 million Euros by...

Presumed dead one day, then reported alive the next. It has been a year since the saga of the disappearance of 2 Tunisians, journalist and blogger Sofiène Chourabi and photographer Nadir Ktari (photo), started. The team went missing on 8th September 2014 in the Ajdabiya area, in eastern Libya, where they were working for Tunisian channel First Tv, without official authorisation. The latest...

The Tunisian telecommunications company (SOTETEL), subsidiary of the Tunisian Telecom Group, is in the doldrums on the Tunisian Stock Exchange, where on Monday 7 September, the value of its shares experienced its biggest daily drop (-5.7%), reaching at the same time its lowest historical level at 1.5 dinars.  This is a long way from the years 2000 to 2001, when SOTETEL share reached 126...

Côte d’Ivoire issued a FCfa 150 billion bond on the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) market with a 5.85% coupon, to finance large scale investments in infrastructure, announced the Treasury Director, Adama Koné (photo), on 8th September. The bond will have a tenor of 7 years. It will be offered in units of FCfa 10,000 each to investors from the eight member-countries of the...