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

New Get-Rich-Quick Scheme of Côte d’Ivoire

At the very moment when strange boys in helmets were staging a coup-theatre performance in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire managed to establish a lucrative gas alliance with Benin and Togo

🇧🇯🇹🇬 Benin and Togo have agreed to join forces with Côte d’Ivoire and create, with World Bank support, a regional gas alliance. The main goal is to secure supplies to Togo and Benin, where electricity generation depends heavily on gas.

✌ The ultimate winner here is Côte d’Ivoire: it is the only one of the 3 that has its own gas production and will serve as an entry point for international gas imports — one of the aims of the initiative is joining markets to bargain with international commodity traders.

🇳🇬 At the moment, Benin and Togo receive gas through the West African Gas Pipeline, which carries gas from Nigeria to Benin, Togo, and Ghana. The reliability of WAGP supplies has been in question for years: there have been breakdowns, pirate activity, and persistent supply issues within Nigeria itself.

🔸 As a result, the Ivorian oil and gas players win a jackpot - they will expand the gas sales and earn on gas transition, through which the World Bank's funds will also flow into the pockets of gas importers.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Trump Seems to Have Found the Map of Africa 🗺

After signing the deal with the DRC and taking aim at Tanzania, the US has now set its sights on Zambia.

🗽 An American delegation arrived in Zambia to promise President Hakainde Hichilema financial support in exchange for reforms and “collaboration in the mining sector”. According to reports, the financial assistance will also be directed toward social needs.

🤝 It is clear what kind of cooperation Washington wants from Zambia: the country has huge copper-mining operations and reserves, but the sector is crowded with Chinese companies, which also recently secured an official concession to modernise the TAZARA railway linking Zambia’s deposits with ports on the Indian Ocean.

💰 As usual, Zambia will receive American "financial aid" only after meeting criteria set by Washington. Given that the Chinese typically offer investments and financing with almost no conditions, this offer may be considered to be not worth the effort .

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Enigmatic Noises from Zimbabwe 🌟

Analysts are puzzling over the reshuffle in one of Zimbabwe’s most important ministries

🌐 On 8 December, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa unexpectedly replaced the country’s top mining official — now former minister Winston Chitando — with his former deputy, Polite Kambamura.

📄 Since the government didn't bothered to explain, people are reading the move from opposite angles: either Chitando was caught in corruption or failing to meet targets, or, on the contrary, he stood in the way of the president’s family members enriching themselves through mines.

🗳 A third version is political — that he did not show enough enthusiasm in supporting the planned extension of Mnangagwa’s presidency to 2030.

⚙️ The most plausible explanation is that Chitando obstructed some murky deals — although this does not necessarily imply the Mnangagwa family/ It may simply have been a desire to indulge "investors" in general.

❓ The corruption/ineffectiveness version seems unlikely, given that his ministry’s policies clearly aimed at local processing of ore (especially lithium) and at raising gold royalties. While the idea that he was removed for insufficient political zeal seems hardly relevant to the role of a mining minister.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow