Hopes of become an international energy player have been delayed at least five years as Exxon Mobil put the hold on investing in the vast resource beneath Cabo Delgado.

Exxon Mobil made an intermediate decision last year to invest in the exploitation of liquid petroleum gas in Mozambique.

According to Mozambique analyst Jo Hanlon that was for the benefit of President Felipe Nysui’s election campaign.

Now the real ink on the dotted line has been delayed five years, meaning production cannot start until 2030.

The depression caused by the COVID 19 pandemic has stalled investment everywhere.

Gas prices, which follow oil prices, halved between 2018 and 2019 and then halved again this year as Saudi Arabia and Russia boosted production to push U.S. shale out of the market.

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His visits to Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia start tomorrow.

Once Democracy was high on the agenda on an African visit by US Secretary of State.

Not so today with the autocratic President Donald Trump who has virtually  ignored the continent he dismissed with a vulgar epithet.

Mike Pompeo will concentrate on China’s increasing role in Africa – particularly in Angola which is paying back in oil shipments the $25-billion debt to Beijing.

He also has to talk about African countries calling  for a reduction in the small numbers of US troops on the continent

Pompeo will have to explain the tightening of visa restrictions on many Africans visiting the United States .

The post Mike Pompeo undertakes his first safari as US Secretary of State appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

She’s the subject of a criminal investigation into misappropriation of funds when she was chief executive of Angola’s state-owned oil company Sonangol.

Isabel Dos Santos was given the Sonangol job by her father Jose Eduardo Dos Santos when he was President of Angola.

Exploiting  that special relationship made her Africa’s richest woman with a fortune of $2,2- billion.

Angola’s seeking to recoup money from her.

Dos Santos, who lives in London, says she’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.

Dozens of personal and corporate bank accounts she hold in Portugal have been seized by Lisbon authorities along with those of her husband Sandika Dokolo.

The post Portugal freezes bank accounts of Isabel Dos Santos appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Nuno Ribeiro Da Cunha was named as Dos Santos’ co-accused in charges brought by Angolan authorities yesterday.

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Police say everything points to suicide in the death of 45-year-old Nuno Ribeiro Da Cunha.

He was suffering from depression and had made one attempt at his life.

Da Cunha was named as co-accused with Isabel Dos Santos in embezzlement and money laundering charges brought by Angolan authorities.

At the Euro Bic bank, he handled her account when she was chief executive of Angola’s state-owned oil company Sonangol in 2016 and 2017.

Euro Bic has cut ties with Dos Santos who was their major shareholder

The post Isabel Dos Santos’ banker found dead in Lisbon appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

To get the oldest daughter of former President Josè Eduardo Dos Santos into the dock, Angolan authorities will have to extradite her from London.

Former President Josè Eduardo Dos Santos, dubbed by the watchdog group Transparency International as one of the most corrupt leaders on the planet, put his daughter in charge of Angola’s state-owned oil company Sonangol in 2016. 

She was sacked a year later by her father’s successor Joao Lourenco.

Thousands of  documents allegedly showing how she crookedly  accumulated more than two billion dollars of Angolan public money have been leaked to the media – spurring the corruption charges.

The post Isabel Dos Santos charged with fraud appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Portugal’s Euro Bic bank has cut ties with the daughter of former  Angolan President Josè Eduardo Dos Santos.

Portuguese authorities are investigating media reports citing 70 000 leaked documents of how Isabel Dos Santos illegally used her family ties to become Africa’s richest woman.

Angola’s prosecution service says it will use all possible means to bring Dos Santos back home to face prosecution.

She currently lives in London from where she denies any impropriety and says she is the subject of a politically-inspired witch hunt.

International financial services company Price Waterhouse Cooper says  heads could roll over its links with Dos Santos.

Euro Bic is probing the transfer of tens of millions of dollars by the former president’s daughter. 

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Isabel Dos Santos, living in exile in Portugal, insists she is a scapegoat in a bigger scheme of things.

Spokesman for the Angolan Attorney General Alvaro Joao says the prosecution hasn’t seized the assets abroad of Isabel Dos Santos but will not hesitate to do this if necessary.

Joao says the case being built against the former president’s daughter is civil one designed to recoup debts  owed to the state.

Criminal corruption  charges have not been laid.

Isabel can opt to repay the debts now and avoid further action or she can choose to let the court process take its course.

The post Isabel Dos Santos faces civil action rather than criminal charges appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

$3billion of this comes from the country’s sovereign wealth fund.

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Angolan Justice Minister Francisco Queiroz did not give much detail when he made this disclosure to a conference in Abu Dhabi other than to say the stolen money had been siphoned off at home and abroad by corruption and money laundering.

Since becoming President in 2017, Joao Lourenco has sought to stop the drain of public money into the pockets of his predecessor Jose Eduardo Dos Santos and his family.

The former President’s son Jose Filomeno is on trial for a $500 million payment into a London bank account from the sovereign wealth fund he managed.

Lourenco has also sacked Dos Santos’ daughter Isabel – Africa’s richest woman – as head of country’s state oil company.

The post Angola recovers $5 billion in stolen public money appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Of course President Donald Trump would back his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsanaro.

They both put the short-term political benefit of climate change  denialism above the long-term interests of generations too young to vote for them. And the man known as the Trump of the tropics showed at the G7 summit in Biarritz last weekend that he shares the American leader’s convenient incoherence.

Without regard for the ten other countries in the Amazon region, Bolsanaro refused to accept the $22 million from the group of seven richest nations on Earth to help fight the thousands of forest fires threatening the area known as the planet’s tree lung.

Then he said, he would take the money if French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew that statement calling him a liar and hoping Brazil would get a better leader.

Finally he cast aside the need for an apology and agreed to accept the G7 help, provided Brazil given a free hand to determine how it would be spent.

Macron spoke at the meeting he hosted of the need to address the fires raging around Africa’s rain forests which are second largest lung on Earth.

There was no reticence expressed by any of the five African leaders – President Cyril Ramaphosa included –  invited to the G7 summit.

They have yet to hear details, most importantly the magnitude of the help.

Experts advise against making too easy a comparison between  the fires in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo showing up on  NASA maps and actually out numbering those in the conflagration in the Amazon basin.

The African fires are not actually in the rain forest. They are a seasonal phenomenon caused by farmers conducting slash and burn agriculture.

Denis Maclean of UN Disaster Risk Reduction   says the damage from fires is unacceptably high on both sides of the Atlantic. 

155000 square kilometers of rain forest have been lost  to fire in the last decade , commercial logging and palm oil cultivation in the past decade.

West Africa has lost 90% of its forest coverage in the past century.

Forest fires kill 300 000 people a year.

With population growth projected to increase fivefold by the end of the century, it impacts dramatically on the sustainability of the planet.

Any money directed to Africa should be used not only to immediately fight the fires but on educating people on their relationship with their environment.  

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