💡 1,000 Years of Light
[ Minerals In Numbers ]

Have you ever wondered how much oil has already been pumped out of the planet — and how much is still left?

🛢 When it comes to Africa, calculations by the South African organisation Africa Energy Chamber tell us that Africa has produced around 420 billion barrels of oil equivalent over the period of recorded extraction.

A barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of measurement equal to the energy released by burning one barrel of crude oil, allowing both oil and natural gas to be measured with a single metric.

⚡ 420 billion BOE is an enormous amount of oil and gas — enough to power and heat the entire continent for approximately 715 years at current levels of electricity consumption.

⌛️ The number itself is both awe-inspiring and depressing. But what looks even more discouraging is the fact that the remaining known reserves of oil and gas are less than half of what has already been produced — 180 billion BOE versus 420 billion.

In other words, we have already extracted 70% of known reserves. And the saddest part is that the benefits have gone to all and sundry — foreigners, local elites, armed groups — except ordinary people.

#MineralsInNumbers

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Create Waste and Walk Away

The French were apparently unable to clean up properly before leaving Niger

☢️ Niger’s Minister of Justice, Alio Daouda, announced that the state plans to sue Orano, the French state-owned nuclear company, over several million tonnes of radioactive waste at an abandoned uranium site near Arlit in the north of the country.

Radiation measurements at the site show 7–10 microsieverts/hour, compared to the normal 0.5 microsieverts/hour and samples contain Bismuth-207 and Chromium-10, both dangerous to human health even at a distance of 10 metres.

⚙️ The French had been operating uranium mines in Arlit for decades. Independent field studies by Greenpeace and French human-rights groups in 2009 and 2010 already documented abnormally high radiation levels in residential areas and uranium contamination in drinking water.

🗑 In 2025, the authorities ended cooperation with Orano and nationalised the mine. Although the Minister of Justice did not say it outright, it seems likely that the “sale of uranium” to Russia that the French media have been lamenting recently actually referred to radioactive waste — which the government decided to transport for processing.

Ironically, now it looks like the French prompted the Niger-sells-our-uranium outcry — and in doing so revived themselves the long-standing issue of careless treatment of nuclear waste. Whoever in Niger came up with this PR move deserves a bonus.

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🎞 Israeli Mafia in Congo

A Jewish businessman helping to launder billions of dollars in one of the poorest countries on Earth — it sounds either like a joke or a Hollywood thriller starring Nicolas Cage

🛫. Young Israeli diamond trader Dan Gertler arrived in Congo in the late 1990s. An inexperienced businessman might easily have stayed unnoticed — if the country’s new president Laurent-Désiré Kabila had not been in desperate need of cash.

Dan Gertler (born 23 December 1973) is an Israeli billionaire businessman in natural resources. Until 2022, his group had mining and oil interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has invested in diamonds, iron ore, gold, cobalt, copper, agriculture, and banking. As of 2025 his fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion by Forbes.

💎 That is when the diamond dealer caught the government’s eye. Gertler offered the fragile president $20 million, and in return received a monopoly over diamond trade in the DRC.

🇺🇸 After the death of the elder President Kabila, Gertler became a close ally of his heir, Joseph, serving as his wallet and lobbyist. He even connected the new president with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — a meeting that helped Kabila secure international recognition.

🗳 In 2011, elections caught the regime short of cash again — and once more Gertler was there to help. He offered to buy state shares in mining projects.

🇨🇭 To do this, Gertler teamed up with Swiss giant Glencore, which still mines copper and cobalt in Congo. Together they carried out more than a dozen deals worth over a billion dollars.

💸True, the prices were far below market value — but Kabila did not care, as he won the re-election.

⛔️Gertler’s schemes were so brazen that even the US imposed sanctions on him in 2017. In 2022, Kinshasa did reclaim some of the assets gifted to him — this time at an outrageously inflated price.

And so he — as well as his Swiss partners — continues to live comfortably, profiting from minerals stolen from the Congolese people.

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A New Minister in Namibia

📰 Namibia has appointed a journalist as its new Minister of Industry and Mines.

🌐 The President of Namibia has nominated Modestus Amutse — a former journalist, deputy minister of information, and chair of the parliamentary committee on legal and constitutional affairs — as the country’s new Minister of Industry, Energy and Mines.

Namibia is a major producer of uranium and diamonds, and has discovered large offshore oil reserves in the Orange Basin. Its first crude production may begin around 2030.

🚩 The ministerial seat Amutse has received is highly influential but also volatile — the president frequently reshuffles industrialisation ministers, and for a brief period in October she even held the portfolio herself.

⏩ Amutse’s appointment may reflect a desire to install someone from outside the entrenched industrial and mining networks, someone who would be less tied to existing elites and more directly accountable to the president.

🔸 Alternatively, his background in PR and IT may have been decisive factor - instrumental in terms of establishing new communication patterns and maintaining stronger informational oversight over miners.

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Côte d’Ivoire’s Hazardous Flying Dutchman
[Cost of Greed]

Twenty years ago, off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire, an event occurred in which no one drowned — yet it could easily overshadow the tragic sinking of the Titanic.

In 2006, a multinational company called Trafigura faced an unusual problem: it had purchased an extremely sulphurous but cheap petroleum product known as coker gasoline, which needed to be somehow refined into regular fuel.

⏩ The goal was not only to refine the hazardous substance, but also to save as much as possible along the way.⏪

⚓️ Instead of hiring a proper refinery, Trafigura decided to process the toxic feedstock at sea — on an old ship called Probo Koala, using an outdated method known as "caustic washing", in which coker gasoline is treated with caustic soda.

☣️ The scheme worked, and the company sold the resulting fuel for $19 million — but what remained on board was toxic waste.

💵 And once again money was accorded priority: Trafigura rejected an offer to treat the waste in the Netherlands for $620,000, and the Probo Koala began wandering along the coast of West Africa in search of anyone willing to rid it of its poisonous burden.

⚠️ Eventually the company hired shady contractors in Abidjan for miserable $17,000. Upon arrival, after the ship unloaded the waste, the material was allegedly spread by subcontractors across the city and its surroundings, dumped in waste grounds, public landfills, and along roads in populated areas.

In the weeks that followed, the BBC reported that

17 people died

,

23 were hospitalized

, and another

40,000 sought medical treatment

.

🤝 For fear of prosecution, Trafigura agreed in 2007 to pay the Ivorian government around $200 million — for an indulgence that granted the company sweeping immunity from prosecution.

Hazardous waste still lie in the soil underneath Abidjan.

#CostOfGreed

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🤖 Now It’s Safe for Sure

An unusual cutting-edge solution has been introduced to protect pipelines in the Niger Delta

🌐 Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited, the company responsible for monitoring Nigeria’s Trans Niger Pipeline, has decided to hire town criers.

🙂 The idea is that the criers will (no doubt sincerely) sell the pipeline to people in 215 communities across Rivers, Bayelsa, Imo, and Abia States — and keep watch over local sentiment toward the project.

➡️ Thus, instead of addressing the source of popular discontent — endless oil spills and resource exploitation — the pipeline beneficiaries opted for primitive propaganda.

In any case, talking to people and engaging in dialogue is always better than cleansing activists.

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👋 China. Go Out.

How China’s policy of encouraging overseas investment created lunar landscapes across Africa

🌍 In the 1990s, China launched its “Go Out” policy, encouraging state-owned and private entities to expand abroad in search of resources and investment opportunities. One of the main drivers was the need to secure mineral supplies at low prices to sustain a slowing domestic economy.

“We need to implement a ‘going outside’ strategy, encouraging enterprises with comparative advantages to make investments abroad, to establish processing operations, to exploit foreign resources with local partners, to contract for international engineering projects, and to increase the export of labor.”

— Zhu Rongji, Premier of the State Council
Report to the National People’s Congress, 2001

👥 Alongside state companies, thousands of ordinary fortune-seekers from also headed overseas, emboldened by the prospect of “quick enrichment” amid rising gold prices.

🌍 The influx of Chinese enthusiasts was most visible in West Africa, especially Ghana. Estimates suggest that between 2008 and 2013, more than 50,000 Chinese nationals entered the country to participate in illegal gold mining.

⚙️ But Chinese diggers were notable not only for their numbers. The “Go Out” policy allowed them to bring in heavy machinery on a massive scale — something previously unseen in illegal gold mining.

⏩ The scheme was simple:

🔸A major Chinese investor arrives in Country X with heavy equipment backed by the Chinese government and its loans under the "Going Out" policy
🔸Part of that equipment is then written off and quietly sold to illegal groups
🔸Those groups use it to level forests and dig enormous pits nearby.

🏁 As a result, local artisanal miners are either pushed out or join the Chinese operations, and the soil is left contaminated with mercury and lead all across the continent.

#PolicyReview

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It's Not the Black Pearl, Again…

🏴‍☠️ Fifty nautical miles off Equatorial Guinea, a routine gas shipment turned into an action thriller complete with a ship hijacking and a kidnapped crew

🌐 On December 3, armed pirates boarded the CGAS Saturn, a liquefied gas carrier en route from Gabon to Equatorial Guinea, seized 9 crew members, and vanished without a trace.

🌼 The pirates showed remarkable prudence — and environmental awareness — by leaving 4 people on board, apparently to maintain minimal control of the vessel.

🧭 There are enough pirates in the Gulf of Guinea to gather a full-fledged criminal navy. The Institute for Security Studies has even identified one group of 270 fighters under the unified command of a figure known as a "Border King". Such pirates mostly hide in the Niger Delta and along the Nigeria–Cameroon border.

⏩The fate of the gas carrier hijackers remains unknown. If they are not eaten by the Kraken, they will soon make a public demand for ransom.

The reason this ship became a target, however, is entirely clear: since there are no pipelines or rail links between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, the two countries can trade — including in gas — only by sea.

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Oblivion in Congo

🛸In the not-so-famous 2013 Tom Cruise film Oblivion, aliens send huge flying machines to Earth that remotely harvest water and transfer it up to an orbital reservoir

🇨🇬 Why mention this? Because in Congo, Italian Eni has just put into operation a massive floating gas-processing ship designed to send gas straight to Europe.

📐The vessel the Italians dragged to the Congolese coast is 60 metres wide and 376 metres long. It was built in China beginning in 2023.

🏗Constructing a classic onshore LNG terminal in Congo would have required multibillion-dollar port works, new high-capacity pipelines, and the construction of the plant itself — something Eni clearly did not want to pay for.

👐 The result is very convenient: Congo’s role and the role of its population are reduced to a minimum, the gas flows to Europe, and the government receives whatever “change” falls out of the deals.

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Chains — But in Exchange for What?

Trump gathered an entire assembly of African leaders to sign agreements on peace in eastern DRC and the Great Lakes region — but in the end, Congo's Tshisekedi simply sold him the country

🇨🇩 On 4 December, the leaders of the DRC and Rwanda, as well as Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Angola and Togo, met in Washington to sign the “Washington Accords” — a package of agreements supposedly aimed at establishing peace in the Eastern DRC. However, it seems the only outcome of these accords will be unrestrained exploitation of the DRC by the US.

📄 The main terms under which Félix Tshisekedi effectively sold his country are laid out in the US–DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement.

According to it:

⏩ The DRC will create a Strategic Asset Reserve (SAR) — a special fund for resource assets managed by a joint commission of 5 members from Washington and 5 from Kinshasa (Article 4).

⏩ The fund will include a list of projects involving critical minerals and gold reserved for American investors. The DRC is obliged (Art. 4, para. 3) to constantly update the fund adding new assets.

⏩ The US investors enjoy the Droit du seigneur - that is the right of first refusal on resource shipments from SAR projects, as well as preferential rights to participate in those projects (Arts. 6–7).

🔸 Beyond the SAR, the DRC is obliged to export a fixed share of its resources via the US-backed Lobito Corridor (Art. 9).

🔸 Finally, there will be another structure — a Strategic Minerals Reserve, essentially a warehouse which is to be replenished by the Congolese state-owned companies (like Gecamines) and from which the US may withdraw critical minerals at its discretion in the event of a future confrontation with China (Art. 11).

❓ It is unclear what Congo gets in return. It is highly doubtful that the United States — having already secured such an agreement — will want or be able to force insurgents in eastern Congo to pack their bags and disappear.

🇨🇳 The only smidgen of “benefit” for the DRC in these slave-like terms is that the country’s existing exploitation by China will now be counterbalanced by a second (potential) exploitation by Washington.

Bravo, Félix! An exemplary colonial partition.

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🇳🇬 Nigeria’s Old Friends

Nigerian tycoons, the Chagoury brothers, have been doing business in the country longer than its modern political system has existed. And they have always managed to keep up with the times — constantly gathering new assets under their belt, now including lithium.

🧑‍⚖️ The UK-based company Jupiter Lithium has filed a lawsuit against the Nigerian government, claiming its rights to develop lithium in Kaduna State were violated. Reportedly, part of its assets was revoked over the summer and effectively transferred to another company — Atlantic Mining Technologies.

💰 Atlantic Mining Techniques is a Nigerian firm backed by local tycoons Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury, along with Australian investors.

🤝 The British, who had already invested millions of dollars in exploration and project development, seemingly have just goofed. The Chagoury brothers consistently secure the juiciest multi-billion-dollar concessions in Nigeria and maintain a close friendship with President Tinubu — whose son Seyi Tinubu allegedly holds stakes in some of their ventures.

💪 The Nigerian Govt has thus mounted a brave defense against Western companies grabbing local resources —only to promote the interests of elites with Nigerian citizenship (and, admittedly, also Lebanese citizenship and who knows what else).

Most likely, the small and not particularly wealthy Jupiter Lithium will eventually leave Nigeria empty-handed — a more important partner has appeared.

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🇹🇩 Chad: The West Returns

Western companies are once again engaging in Chad’s oil sector — and for now, with relative success

🛢 The Franco-British company Perenco has almost doubled its crude oil production in Chad, having reached 18,000 barrels per day.

📏 While this result would barely register in neighboring countries — in Cameroon or Nigeria it would be dismissed as a statistical error — for Chad it amounts to more than 10% of total national oil output.

➡️ This is a major shift in the oil industry of Chad, which is currently dominated by China’s CNPC.

➡️ For years, Chadian authorities hounded foreign companies, though the goal was more about securing kickbacks than about any real local development. In 2023 the government nationalized what remained of the Western majors’ footprint by taking over Savannah Energy’s assets. Leaving CNPC effectively the only serious player.

This is unlikely to have any impact on the general well-being of the Chadian population, but probably we may soon witness at least some competition between one of the richest companies in the world and a smaller but ambitious Franco-British venture for Chad’s resources.

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I Brought You Whiskey and Drugs, My Friends

🇬🇧 On Thursday, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered a truly legendary speech at an economic conference in Imo State, Nigeria (see above).

⚡️Clearly in an overstimulated state, the former PM did nothing to restrain himself and openly explained to Nigerians how their country looks from the lofty heights of Big Ben.

⏩ First of all, Johnson was, of course, delighted that Nigeria does not behave like the surrounding former French colonies — where the French are no longer welcome:

“I will say nothing of those former colonies of France, but it’s wonderful; it’s absolutely wonderful that here in Nigeria, we are united, we have this huge blessing.”

⏩ He then offered a brief lesson on how neocolonial practices work, describing — in his trademark style — the trade and economic inequality between Nigeria and its former metropole. Nigeria, he said, sends to the distant islands its oil and its brains, while Britain offers to Nigeria financial and other services and, suddenly, whiskey:

“I’m very proud of what we export to Nigeria. We send you pharmaceuticals, bankers, services of all kinds and huge quantities of whiskey… And in return, you send us oil, gas, Nollywood movies, brilliant doctors, nurses, tech geniuses. We are very, very grateful.”

🔸 There is nothing truly revelatory here — but it is still amusing to see a discarded politician speak without autocue and simply blurt out everything he really thinks.

I wonder how much whiskey he personally exported to Nigeria that day. 🤔

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Didn’t Take Long

✍️ After the sealing of the agreement effectively selling the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Trump granting the US preferential access to DRC resources, concrete mechanisms of the American expansion have begun to unfold.

🇺🇸 With private investors showing little initiative, the main role will fall to the US Development Finance Corporation (USDFC) — a government agency holding a mandate from Trump to advance American economic interests abroad.

⏩ The day after the Washington agreements were signed the corporation rushed to announce its interest in two projects.

🔸 The first is a joint venture between the Swiss resource trader Mercuria and Congo’s state-owned Gécamines, through which Gécamines will sell the minerals it receives from its minority stakes in active mining projects.

🔸The second is the infamous Lobito Corridor, where the USDFC wants to bring in the Portuguese construction firm Mota-Engil — one of the owners of the Angolan section of the corridor— to build another stretch inside the DRC. Here, the Americans even named the concrete amount they are ready to chip in: USD 1 billion.

📦 Logistics is thus becoming the primary focal point of the US economic engagement in Central Africa — which is natural, as it entails less risks than serious mining ventures.

What can this say? The entire situation shows that the aspiring Nobel Prize winner has at last decided to go beyond loud statements and start some pushing real projects.

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A New East India Company?

❔What structures will play the key role in projecting American economic influence in Africa?

🗽 An increasingly important role in advancing US interests is now played by the US Development Finance Corporation, created in 2019 through the merger of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and a branch of USAID.

🕯 It is headed by millionaire and investor Benjamin Black, appointed in October 2025. Black’s appointment was purely political — he had no background in international affairs, but he had long criticized USAID for spending on social and environmental programs, advocating instead for investments aligned with US economic interests.

💰 The agency receives funding from the US budget and has already invested roughly $50 billion worldwide, including in resource-sector projects in Nigeria, Uganda, the DRC, Angola, Gabon, and Zambia.

📈 Its involvement in mineral-resource projects is only beginning to gain momentum, especially in light of new announcements following the signing of the Washington Accords. In 2024, >50% of all agency projects were resource-related, although a large share of these were investments in agriculture.

⏩ So far the agency seems to be filling the gap between Washington’s desire to take part in the global competition over critical minerals and the tendency of American private investors to choose stable, predictable ventures and avoid geopolitical risk.

If Washington truly plans to compete with China beyond mere rhetoric, this will certainly imply greater investment and much more working noise from the USDFC in the future.

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⚔️ Niger Under Attack

Insurgents in Niger cannot sleep without thinking about oil (just like me, frankly).

🌟 Rebels from Niger's MPLJ movement, which seeks to restore the previous political order under President Bazoum — ousted in July 2023 — are intensifying attacks on the oil assets of the Chinese company CNPC.

💥 This night a video has appeared allegedly showing an explosion at some oil facility in the Agadem area, followed by MPLJ’s claim of responsibility. How serious the damage is and what exactly is blowing up in the footage remains unclear.

⏩ A similar video surfaced already in November, where the same forces also attacked, again at night, what was believed to be a pipeline linked to the same oilfield. The rebels’ main demand is that the Chinese stop supporting Niger's ruling regime.

⏩ For the Chinese, this is essentially usual working environment. Even before the recent operations of MPLJ, the same pipelines had been blown up by other groups, and in February, a local ISIS affiliate even kidnapped two CNPC employees.

🔸 Since Niamey can hardly survive without oil, they will cling to the Chinese with both hands, protecting the black gold at all costs.

🌑 In this particular case, the repeated night attacks may indicate that MPLJ still lacks the strength for something bigger — or that expelling or even insulting CNPC seriously is not the real goal. Someone may simply want a share of the oil revenues.

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Yes, Indeed, “Local Partners”...
[ Cost of Greed ]

🇦🇴 The Angolan government systematically requires companies that want to operate in the country to enter joint ventures with “local partners”. In reality, these “partners” are often members of the elite and well-connected oligarchs who divert oil revenues away from the population.

🌟 Perhaps the most notorious case came in 2009, courtesy of the entourage of José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s President from 1979 to 2017. Unfortunately, Angolan officials were not particularly inventive: the corruption scheme was a classic one — let a foreign company in on preferential terms, while demanding stakes in its subsidiaries for individuals in the ruling elite.

💵 To enter the Angolan oil market in 2009, the Swiss firm Trafigura aligned itself with one of the era’s key power-brokers and corruption figures, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento (better known as General “Dino”).

🤝 Trafigura and General Dino created the joint venture DT Group (DT = Dino and Trafigura). It secured a de facto monopoly on supplying all refined petroleum products to Angola and engaged in exporting part of Angola’s crude abroad. Through another company — Cochan, also tied to Dino — Trafigura built a nationwide network of fuel stations.

⚙️ This joint venture enabled Trafigura to set up one of its most lucrative arrangements. Upstream, Trafigura obtained crude oil from the state company Sonangol at preferential prices. Downstream, it supplied Angolans with fuel refined overseas through its service stations.

👁 Despite the mind-numbing simplicity of the scheme and its public exposure, the main actors walked away unscathed. After a change of leadership in 2017, General Dino simply exited the stage and vanished. Trafigura continues to operate in Angola today and even owns part of the railway connecting Angola with the DRC.

🔖 I first learnt about this case in The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy.

#CostOfGreed

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