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.

Devils Below

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.

Devils Below

🇳🇬 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.

Devils Below

🇹🇩 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.

Devils Below

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. 🤔

Devils Below

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.

Devils Below

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.

Devils Below

⚔️ 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.

Devils Below

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

Devils Below

Chevron Re-falls in Love with Nigeria

Falling levels of oil theft from Nigeria’s pipelines start bringing foreign companies back

🌐 Jim Schwartz, the head of Chevron’s Nigerian subsidiary, announced with great satisfaction that in 2025 the company recorded no oil theft and no attacks on its pipelines in Nigeria, promising an expansion of operations in 2026.

🔸 Before this, oil majors such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron itself had been selling off their onshore assets to local companies, in part because of widespread theft. In 2023, losses were estimated at up to 400,000 barrels per day, nearly 25–30% of total production.

⏩ A full year without theft is the longest such period in Chevron’s history in Nigeria — and it matches a broader trend. In 2025 the government finally managed to introduce measures that pushed oil theft down to its lowest level in more than a decade.

🔸 A revived interest from oil majors is hardly a reason to celebrate. It is merely a sign that some symptoms have been contained and gangs of criminal enthusiasts now cannot access the pipelines as easily as they used to. Meanwhile, corruption and shadow schemes are still persistent in the country's most lucrative sector.

Ordinary Nigerians may start seeing real benefits only when transparency is established in the oil sector and the beneficiaries of the shadow oil economy inside the state are finally exposed.

Devils Below

🌐 Weekly News Digest on Africa’s Mineral Industries [ December 1 – December 7 ]

This was a week of crude production, logistics projects and US geopolitical ambitions.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇹🇩 Chad

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

🇨🇬 Congo

- Eni puts into operation a massive floating gas-processing ship

🇨🇩 DR Congo

- Ivanhoe Mining launches what it calls “the largest and greenest copper smelter in Africa”
- US and DRC sign a Strategic Partnership Agreement
- US Development Finance Corporation aims at two copper-linked projects in DRC

🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea

- Armed pirates seized 9 crew members of a LNG carrier and vanish without a trace

🇲🇱 Mali

- Mali recovers about $1.2 billion from its mining sector in the wake of an audit

🇲🇿 Mozambique

- Investors withdraw support for TotalEnergies’ gas project in Mozambique
- President Chapo defends TotalEnergies against an accusation of complicity in mass murder

🇳🇦 Namibia

- A former journalist Modestus Amutse nominated as the country’s new Minister of Industry, Energy and Mines

🇳🇪 Niger

- Niger plans to a French state-owned nuclear company over several million tonnes of radioactive waste
- Rebels from Niger's MPLJ movement are intensifying attacks on the assets of the Chinese oil giant CNPC

🇳🇬 Nigeria

- Nigerian company responsible for monitoring Nigeria’s Trans Niger Pipeline decides to hire town criers
- The British company Jupiter Lithium sues Nigerian government over violations of its rights to develop lithium in Kaduna State
- Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered a speech at an economic conference in Imo State
- Chevron plans to expand its operations in Nigeria

🇿🇦 South Africa

- South African group Yellowstone sign a concession to expand the Kasumbalesa border checkpoint between the DRC and Zambia.

🇺🇬 Uganda

- In 2027, the UK-based Blencowe Resources plans to begin graphite mining in Uganda

#NewsDigest

Devils Below

Switzerland and Foreign Bribery
[ Policy Review ]

"Corruption is only bad if I am not involved"

🇨🇭 The image of Switzerland has always been double-sided: on one hand, the country is associated with banking, precision, and reliability — on the other, it has long been a haven for murky, two-faced deals and moral flexibility.

📄 Historically, many global commodity traders have been registered in Switzerland: Trafigura, Glencore, Vitol, Gunvor, and others. We have already written about Glencore and Trafigura who bribed officials in the DRC and Angola. But these cases only stand out in terms of publicity — offering bribes for market access is, in practice, a routine part of the Swiss trading model.

💵 It is enough to note that until 2001, bribes were officially a legitimate basis for tax deductions in Switzerland — the country was called a tax haven for a reason. After 2001, “facilitation fees,” as company accountants labeled them, were banned only if they involved public officials. If it involved a private person, the tax deduction remained legal all the way until 2022.

⛓️ While many developed countries began criminalizing foreign bribery in the late 1970s, Switzerland was unwilling to give up its competitive advantage — extremely permissive legislation. Only in 2000–2001, due to OECD obligations, did the country introduce corresponding criminal and administrative liabilities.

🍫 Even then, the alpine chocolate lovers were in no hurry. The first case in which a company was sanctioned came only in 2011. The first case holding individual managers criminally liable arrived much later — in 2025, linked to Trafigura’s bribes in Angola.

💲 Remarkably, Switzerland profits both from corruption and from fighting it. From 2011 to 2024, Swiss courts closed 14 cases, collecting around $945 million (fines + illicit profits). But unlike for instance the United States, Switzerland does not return these funds to the countries harmed by the corruption.

A remarkable ability to find profit everywhere — whether by allowing companies to bribe officials abroad or by charging them for doing so.

#PolicyReview

Devils Below

Power to Smelt

Electricity may kill or save South Africa's chrome production

🇿🇦 South Africa's chrome manufacturers have grabbed preferential electricity tariffs from Eskom, the country’s main power utility. With it a chance arrives to preserve the domestic industry and avoid becoming yet another raw-material appendage of China.

🔥 In the 2000s, South Africa became both the world’s leading producer of chrome ore and the leading manufacturer of ferrochrome. But this advantage started to evaporate when electricity began to soar in price. The smelters of the country’s two major processors — Glencore and Samancor — consume around 6–7% of all electricity in South Africa, while the cost of power has increased eightfold since 2008.

⚙️ As a result, raw ore began to bypass local plants and flow to China, where electricity is roughly 50% cheaper. South African processors responded by shutting down furnaces and threatening the Govt with massive layoffs.

The national responsibility of South Africa’s government now is to preserve its place under the industrial sun — even at the cost of preferential treatment, lower revenues and direct state intervention — before Chinese factories occupy that space entirely.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Stranger Things…. ❓

Parting with money is causing utter confusion among cobalt exporters in the DRC

🤷‍♂️ The Congolese Chamber of Mines — a major association of the country's mining companies — is complaining about ambiguities in the new quota system that the country introduced in October for cobalt exports.

💸 The main source of bewilderment for cobalt producers is the requirement to pre-pay a portion of royalties, which the new rules supposedly oblige them to do under the oversight of the regulator ARECOMS.

📉 However, the logic of the move is perfectly clear: after a February–October export ban, global prices jumped, and Kinshasa now wants to skim off as much revenue as possible. If royalties were collected the usual way — after shipment to Chine which takes 2-3 months — record prices might already fall by then.

💬 Naturally, exporters would prefer to pay taxes and duties based on lower prices at the moment of delivery — but Tshisekedi’s team also knows what it’s doing and will take its share while prices are high.

Exporters will not resist for long. After all, 10% of royalties is not the kind of sum worth suffering losses from a complete halt in sales.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🛢 Nigeria’s Black Friday

The Nigerian government is rushing to hand out oil concessions for nothing

🛒 Nigeria's oil regulator NURPC reduced the signature bonus for bidders in the oil licensing round to $3–7 million. The bidding process for 50 licenses was launched in London on 1 December.

A signature bonus is a non-refundable payment made by a contractor to the government when a petroleum agreement is signed. Firms awarded oil or gas assets are expected to pay this bonus to the government.

💵 The bonus was already reduced last year — from $200 million down to $7–10 million. Now Nigeria's government has apparently judged that oil companies are too poor to pay even that. Maybe it should consider paying Shell and Chevron itself.

⏩ Selling off as much oil as possible has become an idée fixe in Abuja. In 2025 the country exceeded its OPEC quota 3 times, while government officials boasted of producing 1.8 million barrels per day and demanded higher limits.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow