In this exclusive interview, German businessman Franz J. Sedelmayer discusses his decades-long dispute with the Russian government, challenging Russia’s sovereign immunity, and the link between state corruption and the current ...
As the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell has been a major player in Nigerian oil and gas from the beginning, overseeing the first ...
Acting Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Committee (EFCC), Ibrahim Lamorde, is in a tough spot.
It has now been almost four years since the controversial ouster of former EFCC ...
Foreign policy used to be a craft practised by diplomats and statesmen. No longer. In an increasingly globalized economy featuring the disruptive presence of state-owned companies, sovereign wealth, and trends ...
To describe the recent discovery of natural gas deposits off the Southern coast of Mozambique as "transformational" might be an understatement. Until recently, this East African country of about 23 ...
As the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell has been a major player in Nigerian oil and gas from the beginning, overseeing the first commercial export of oil from the country in 1958 from the Oloibiri Field. Their success over the years has been notable, with operations are spread over 30,000 square kilometres in the Niger Delta, including more than 6,000 kilometres of flowlines and pipelines, 86 oil fields, 1,000 producing wells, 68 flowstations, 10 gas plants and two major oil export terminals at Bonny and Forcados.
But after a number of accidents, attacks by militants, and political scandals, is Shell’s honeymoon with Nigeria coming to an end? Some recent events and transactions indicate a shift in the Dutch company’s strategy in the country, opening a window of opportunity for new operators.
It is said in Tbilisi that if many share the same dream, it has the potential to become a reality.
Today, Georgia stands at the doorway of that achievable ‘dream’ in that it seems clear tangible change is on the way. Such change is brought to us by Bidzina Ivanishvili and his newfound ‘Georgian Dream Movement’.
It’s been brought about to bring the one thing that has hindered the political landscape from being competitive. Resources have allowed a President, who many view as having visions of Putinism dancing in his head, to assume that the upcoming elections were his to landslide. And therefore it is resource that the Georgian Dream provides to facilitate free and fair elections, to assist two leading opposition parties in order to effectively compete – giving them the ball and asking them to run.
Acting Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Committee (EFCC), Ibrahim Lamorde, is in a tough spot.
It has now been almost four years since the controversial ouster of former EFCC Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, back when the anti-corruption unit held some level of international legitimacy, as well as a local reputation as a hammer used against Olusegun Obasanjo’s opponents. Ever since then, with Farida Waziri serving as EFCC Chairperson, the agency has become at best a joke, and, at worst, a tool used to persecute some of Nigeria’s fledgling reformers.
But President Goodluck Jonathan’s abrupt firing of Waziri and appointment of Lamorde has given hope to some observers that the lost prestige could be regained. Writing in Next Newspaper, columnist Stephen Davis argues that “Replacing Waziri is a bold step by President Jonathan. It clearly shows this is not a puppet President but a man who may yet be the leader Nigeria desperately needs to carry the nation through a dark and difficult time.”
The following, penned in Arab Newsby Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misperceptions in the world about the nature of their religion, in light of the nation taking on the role of chairing the 57-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“…We did so because we saw an important opportunity to give a fresh impetus to the OIC’s long-standing objectives of promoting modernization in the Muslim world in line with the values of Islam based on peace, tolerance and human dignity. As a country both in Europe and Asia, we do not believe in the Samuel Huntington theory of the “Clash of Civilizations.” Over the past 20 years the advance of globalization, the expansion of free markets and the rise of “emerging” economies from Asia to Latin America have created new linkages rather than the re-emergence of old divisions predicted by Prof. Huntington. Kazakhstan’s own experience as a predominantly Muslim nation with more than 100 ethnic groups and 40 religions and with no history of either inter-religious or inter-ethnic enmity or bloodshed is also a case in point.
Which country offers the most attractive model for development for a rising country – the United States or China?
The answer used to be easy, but not any longer. Mired in a lost decade kicked off by the attacks of 9/11, two long and devastatingly costly wars, and capped off by a sub-prime mortgage crisis of baffling greed and investment banking shell games, the United States has lost more than just its luster – it’s also lost it’s place as the undisputed champion of soft power. When at one moment the iconic Abu Ghraib photos circulated, just a few years later the Chinese celebrated an impressive Olympics with panache and confidence, heralding an arrival of some sort to the next level of global presence. Tens of millions of Chinese citizens have been lifted out of poverty, while the economic growth of the country in the past few decades may be unprecedented in world history.
Although China has proliferated its relationships with a vast number of new countries from Africa to Latin America, their soft power remains constrained by an inflexible political system that resists competition and disagreement. Looking into the benefits and limits of Chinese soft power, David Piling of the Financial Times takes note of a new Central Committee directive that has dedicated a new $174 billion fund not to industry, not to defense, and not to infrastructure – but rather to culture, so that famous chefs, filmmakers, artists, and musicians can take the world by storm and spread the core values and ideas of the Chinese nation. But will this really work if those values and ideas are not allowed to be debated and negotiated in the public space? From the FT:
Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager, today warned that “resource nationalism” was a growing trend, on the rise globally. Their investment chief for natural resources, Evy Hambro, particularly singled out the regimes of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as extreme examples of government intervention, ultimately hinderances to foreign investment.
“We’re seeing a trend around the world of resource nationalism with governments that are short of tax revenue… whether it’s by personal taxation levels or extending into corporate or other ways,” Hambro said at a media briefing, while discussing the company’s investments in mining accounts (totaling $35.75 billion).
“Obviously, you want to stray away from indigenization, which is being proposed by Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Chavez in Venezuela on one end of the extreme,” Hambro said.
One doesn’t often associate the term “corporate social responsibility” with Chinese state-owned businesses, but it would be a mistake to assume that an unguided or less regulated set of standard operating procedures would necessarily produce a competitive advantage. In a number of African nations, local communities are beginning to experience a backlash against their new investors from the East, based on a number of tragic accidents, worker abuses, and the influx of substandard manufactured goods.
Case in point, Human Rights Watch has just come out with a new report on the rising level of human rights abuses occurring in the Zambian mining sector attributable to Chinese-owned copper mines. According to the report,
…safety and labor conditions at Chinese-owned mines are worse than at other foreign-owned mines, and Chinese mine managers often violate government regulations in their treatment of Zambian workers. These violations include poor health and safety conditions, regular 12-hour and even 18-hour shifts involving arduous labor, and anti-union activities, all in violation of Zambia’s national laws or international labor standards. The four Chinese-run copper mining companies in Zambia are subsidiaries of China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Corporation, a state-owned enterprise under the authority of China’s highest executive body. Copper mining is the lifeblood of the Zambian economy, contributing nearly 75 percent of the country’s exports and two-thirds of the central government revenue.
To describe the recent discovery of natural gas deposits off the Southern coast of Mozambique as “transformational” might be an understatement. Until recently, this East African country of about 23 million people had a paltry annual GDP per capita of $1,000 with 70% of the population living below the poverty line. Now, with the announcement made on October 20th by the Italian energy company Eni that more than 22.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be produced, Mozambique’s future is looking suddenly brighter.
To put it in perspective, Mozambique may be able to provide four times the annual consumption of the world’s largest importer, Japan – a truly staggering quantity of gas.
Reuters has a very interesting interview with Evy Hambro, investment advisor at BlackRock Inc., who says that issues of resource nationalism, state intervention, and expropriation are continuing to create increasing risk to the value of some of the world’s leading mining companies, passing costs all the way down to the consumer.
Resource nationalism in producer countries, whether it is the urge to demand a larger share of mineral wealth via company ownership or through taxes, has become a growing problem for the industry as governments face tight budgets in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
“We’re seeing a general trend around the world of resource nationalism with governments that are short of tax revenue… whether it’s by personal taxation levels or extending into corporate or other ways,” Hambro said at a media briefing.
As the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell has been a major player in Nigerian oil and gas from the beginning, overseeing the first commercial export of oil from the country in 1958 from the Oloibiri Field. Their success over the years has been notable, with operations are spread over 30,000 square kilometres in the Niger Delta, including more than 6,000 kilometres of flowlines and pipelines, 86 oil fields, 1,000 producing wells, 68 flowstations, 10 gas plants and two major oil export terminals at Bonny and Forcados.
