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Nigeria and Angola responsible for almost half of OPEC+ oil supply gap – Analysis

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LONDON/LAGOS (Reuters) – Almost half the shortfall in planned oil supply by OPEC and its allies is down to Nigeria and Angola, data seen by Reuters shows, reflecting a number of factors including moves by Western oil majors away from African projects.

OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, pumped 1.45 million barrels per day (bpd) – equal to 1.5% of world supply – below its target in March, the OPEC+ figures seen by Reuters show.

According to the figures, Angola was responsible for almost 300,000 bpd of the OPEC+ supply shortfall while Nigeria was pumping almost 400,000 bpd below target. The war in Ukraine has also hit Russia’s oil trading and its output was about 300,000 bpd short of its March supply target.

The OPEC+ shortfall is one of the reasons global oil prices hit a 14-year high in March above $139 a barrel and it has prompted calls by the United States and other consumers for producers to pump more.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, however, has repeatedly rebuffed the calls – and one contributing factor is simply that some of its members don’t have oil available to pump.

In OPEC’s view, investment cuts after oil prices collapsed in 2015-2016 due to oversupply, along with a growing focus by investors on economic, social and governance (ESG) issues, have led to a shortfall in the spending needed to meet demand.

“There was massive underinvestment in the industry over the years, further complicated by the effect of ESG,” OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters.

“There was a contraction of 25% in 2015 and 2016 – unprecedented. There was no significant recovery before 2020, when we registered a 30% contraction in investments in the industry,” he said.

Figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show there was no significant increase in investment in global oil and gas exploration and production during 2017-2019 – followed by a 32% plunge in 2020.

International oil companies are gradually pulling out of Nigeria’s onshore oil production, although they continue to invest in its vast offshore oil and gas resources, where costs remain competitive.

Shell, which helped transform Nigeria into a leading producer since the 1930s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about investment and the reasons for the decline in Nigerian output.

GULF PRODUCERS BOOST INVESTMENT

OPEC’s Gulf producers led by Saudi Arabia are largely meeting their OPEC+ targets, and OPEC sources say their relative lack of dependence on outside investors has helped.

“The investment shortfall affected more the countries where reliance on foreign investment is more prominent,” an OPEC+ source from a Gulf producer said.

IEA figures show that in 2019, final investment decisions (FIDs) affecting over eight times more crude reserves in the Middle East were taken than those affecting African reserves.

Middle East approvals were also consistently higher from 2011 through 2018.

“Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are increasing investment and that to some extent can help offset declines elsewhere,” said Audun Martinsen, analyst at Rystad Energy.

“It also highlights why OPEC is not intervening more because it is quite hard for OPEC to increase production overnight,” Martinsen said.

Angolan state oil company Sonangol and Nigeria’s state oil firm NNPC did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on their production decline or the reasons for it.

According to a 2021 report from the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation or APICORP, Middle East and North African producers were still expected to boost energy investment to $805 billion in 2021-2025 – up $13 billion on the previous year’s five-year outlook, despite the impact of the pandemic.

In February, Saudi Arabia-based APICORP said it expected rising oil and gas prices to further support energy investment in the region.

TOO MUCH RISK

While Western majors are increasingly focusing on the energy transition and selling oil assets, they remain big producers in Africa. Big Western companies are responsible for 40% of output in Nigeria and 60% in Angola, according to Rystad.

Rystad sees some potential for new investment in Nigeria and Angola but projects remain “too expensive” for the majors.

“Since 2015 the majors have been focusing on cost and developing things in Africa has been too much of a risk with cost overruns,” Rystad’s Martinsen said. “It’s not really part of their key focus any longer.”

Angolan production has fallen 50% since 2015 and output is down by about 30% over the same period in Nigeria, he said. In Nigeria production is expected to grow slightly by 200,000 bpd in the coming years, but then decline again after 2024.

Shell said last month that oil spills arising from pipeline tapping in the Niger Delta doubled in 2021 to the highest since 2016.

Underlining the extent of the decline, exports of key Nigerian crude grade Bonny Light have fallen to just two or three cargoes a month from about eight or nine previously as a result of escalating oil theft.

(Reporting by Alex Lawler, Julia Payne, Ron Bousso, Ahmad Ghaddar and Maha El Dahan. Additional reporting by Noah Browning; Graphics by Alex Lawler and Ahmad Ghaddar; Editing by David Clarke)

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Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom receives, honors foreign investors  

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Team from Italy , Ukraine, and United States of America led by Dr. Emeka Agwu, Chairman of a multi-global company, the PJ-IC

Dr Emeka Agwu, Chairman of Board of directors of a multi-global company, the PJ-IC International led a team of foreign partners to Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria to negotiate a partnership with foreign investors for agricultural development ventures. They had a long meeting with the Executive Governor of the state, His Excellency, Udom Emmanuel. The investors came from Italy , Ukraine, and United States of America.

The partnership would develop strategies for the establishment of agricultural food processing plant, new technology gas cylinder plant, and complete parboiling processing plant & rice mill complex. “Agriculture has been identified as the major solution to leading a regional economic evolution, and the PJ-IC understands that necessity,” said Dr. Agwu on the significance of this partnership.

After the meeting His the Governor welcomed the investors and honored the group’s leader,  Dr Agwu with a State Complimentary Award.

Dr. Agwu has served as Chairman and CEO of PJ-IC, Inc. since its establishment in 2002 realizing new business opportunities and delivering quality solutions in emerging markets worldwide. PJ-IC began as a procurement provider for both private and public interests and expanded its management capacity and capabilities to agronomical development, transportation, infrastructure, housing and construction.

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Elon Musk fired Twitter’s head of sales after she refused to sack more employees

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He had previously begged her not to resign

  • Elon Musk sacked Twitter exec Robin Wheeler after she refused to fire more staff, sources said.
  • Wheeler was sacked despite Musk persuading her to stay after she tried to resign, per Bloomberg.
  • Some Twitter sales staff found out over the weekend and on Monday they were fired, per Platformer.

Elon Musk fired a top Twitter executive after she refused to sack more employees in the ad sales team, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to Insider.

Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s global head of advertising sales, handed in her resignation on Thursday 10, but Musk persuaded her to stay in the job, the sources told Insider’s Lara O’Reilly, and as Bloomberg earlier reported.

One week later, the billionaire changed his mind. Two sources said Wheeler was fired on Friday after she refused to cut the headcount of Twitter’s ad sales team — a department that was already depleted.

Wheeler, whose Twitter bio now says “proud Ex-Twitter Sales Exec,” tweeted on Friday in the past tense, saying: “To the team and my clients….you were always my first and only priority.” She concluded the tweet with a salute emoji, a sign that has recently become symbolic for Twitter employees leaving the company amid layoffs and firings.

Platformer’s Casey Newton reported that some Twitter staff in the sales team found out over the weekend and on Monday that they had been sacked after they couldn’t access Twitter’s systems.

This came after Musk sent an email to employees about his expectations for building “Twitter 2.0.” If staff didn’t sign up for “the new Twitter” by Thursday 5 p.m., they would receive three months of severance, Musk wrote in the email.

Twitter and Wheeler didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment made outside of normal US operating hours on Tuesday.

Wheeler joined Twitter in 2012 as a senior director of sales, which involved managing relationships with some of the company’s biggest clients such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Microsoft, according to her LinkedIn page. She became the head of ad sales in April this year.

Chris Riedy, Twitter’s former vice president of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, replaced Wheeler at the weekend, per multiple Insider sources.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Nigerian Ex-General Takes on Former Partner That Won $11 Billion Award

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(Bloomberg) — A firm owned by a billionaire former Nigerian defense minister is suing an ex-business partner that’s at the center of a high-stakes London trial over an $11 billion arbitration award, previously unreported court documents show.

A UK tribunal ordered Nigeria’s government in 2017 to pay Process and Industrial Development Ltd $6.6 billion in damages after a gas-supply deal soured, and the amount has ballooned with interest. Theophilius Danjuma’s Tita-Kuru Petrochemicals Ltd. brought its own arbitration claim against P&ID in London in 2020, alleging that its designs had been “unlawfully misappropriated” to secure the gas contract, Nigeria said in a filing to a UK court in February.

“P&ID firmly denies that it unlawfully misappropriated anything from Tita-Kuru,” the company’s majority shareholder, Seamus Andrew, said by email, declining to comment further on the arbitration because the proceedings are confidential. A spokesman for Danjuma declined to comment.

Read more: Behind the Multibillion-Dollar Legal Award Nigeria Calls a Sham

Danjuma, 83, amassed a fortune after retiring from the army as a senior general in the late 1970s and going into business. He founded South Atlantic Petroleum Ltd., which holds a 15% interest in two oil fields that produce about 200,000 barrels of crude a day. Danjuma also served as Nigeria’s defense minister from 1999 to 2003.

Tita-Kuru and British Virgin Islands-registered P&ID worked together from 2006 on an unsuccessful project to build a gas-processing plant. Danjuma’s firm claimed in a 2019 letter sent to Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency that P&ID presented work that cost Tita-Kuru $40 million to win its deal with the government. Nigeria repeated that argument in July to a UK court, where it seeks to overturn the multibillion-dollar arbitration award that P&ID won five years ago.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is now preparing for a London trial in January, during which it will try and prove that P&ID secured the gas-supply contract and arbitration award through bribes and lies.

No Wrongdoing

P&ID denies all allegations of wrongdoing and accuses the government of evading its legal obligation to pay it compensation.

While P&ID was entitled to use the design work paid for by Tita-Kuru for the facility it intended to build under the contract with the state, most of the plans ultimately were “not required,” the company said in its response to the government’s allegations in September.

Nigeria’s Attorney General Abubakar Malami said in a witness statement in June 2020 that an earlier settlement struck between Tita-Kuru and P&ID “may have involved” the ex-minister “receiving the right to some form of equity stake” in P&ID and therefore an interest in the company enforcing the award.

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