This Little Maneuver’s Gonna Cost Us 51 Years
[Megaprojects]

🌍 We have already written about the idea of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, meant to sell Nigerian gas to Europe via Algeria. One of its main problems was that between the two ends of the pipeline there is the unstable zone of northern Nigeria, Niger, and southern Algeria. So, an alternative emerged — a detour along Africa’s Atlantic coast, also known as the Nigeria–Morocco Gas Pipeline.

🇲🇦 The idea of laying the pipeline in such an elegant crescent was proposed by the King of Morocco back in 2016. Compared with the previous project, it has 3 key new features:

🔸The pipeline is planned to run along the ocean floor rather than over land;

🔸 The project is aimed at supplying a larger number of African countries;

🔸 Its implementation has actually progressed beyond mere declarations (i.e. nearing the phase of construction).

🐠 It's clear that the project’s relative success stems precisely from a broader African customer base and a lower risks. Not only does it skirt the most dangerous regions, but it also lies on the seabed — so unless fish start converting to radical Islam, politicians have little to worry about.

🔽 Still, the project — which could become the longest offshore gas pipeline in the world — faces the same question as its onshore counterpart: what about the gas in Nigeria itself? Given that the timeline stretches into the 2040s, one has to ask whether Nigeria will be able to offer enough gas by then.

#Megaprojects

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📺 Clearing Out the Old Legacy 📺

Nigeria Purges the Entire Leadership of Its Oil Sector

🌐 Following the replacement of the CEOs of the two key oil and fuel regulators, NUPRC and NMDPRA, Nigeria’s Tinubu has reshuffled no fewer than 21 members of the governing boards of these bodies. The CEO changes took place in mid-December, after one of them came under public criticism from oil magnate Aliko Dangote.

🚮 The growing scale of the shake-up increasingly resembles an effort to replace the appointees of former president Buhari, under whom the two regulators were originally created. Of the 21 new board members, only 3 had previously held these positions, and just 2 were appointed back under the former president.

👑 At the same time, since Tinubu’s inauguration there had been almost no changes to the boards’ leadership, meaning their composition was effectively inherited from his predecessor.

⏩ The president appears to be seeking tighter control over Nigeria’s most critical sector, aiming to ensure unquestioning compliance with his directives while minimizing the risk of internal sabotage — a consideration that is particularly salient in the run-up to the 2027 elections.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 Uganda and Tanzania Thumb Their Noses at Eco-Activists 📺

Uganda is going to see first oil exports by October

🇺🇬 Uganda’s Museveni is expecting a real celebration in October 2026, as the country is finally planning to launch its first-ever oil exports via the EACOP pipeline. The project has faced resistance from environmental activists, who have even coalesced into the StopEACOP movement.

💰 The main beneficiaries are the oil producers — France’s TotalEnergies and China’s CNOOC — which have been unable to sell Uganda’s oil due to the lack of access to seaports. The pipeline will stretch roughly 1,500 km from Lake Albert to the terminals of Port Tanga in Tanzania.

⚠️ The project has drawn criticism over concerns that construction of the pipeline would require the resettlement of local communities and could lead to pollution in the event of oil spills.

🎉 If the pipeline does come online, it will be a genuine triumph for President Museveni, who has ruled the country for decades. Uganda discovered first oil back in the mid-2000s, but exports are yet to come.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 Let’s Pretend This Was the Plan All Along 📺

After Protests, Kinshasa Backs Down to Its Own Population

✔️The DRC government has once again allowed processing units to accept copper and cobalt from artisanal miners, reversing the ban imposed on December 19 last year. Authorities claim that a week of work by a special commission created on December 26 was enough to inspect the sector and resume purchases of artisanal cobalt.

“At the end of the commission’s work (established on December 26) … the commission found violations of the Mining Code and Mining Regulations by all processing entities,” the government said.

🔥 Despite having identified violations on the part of every company processing artisanal ore, the government nevertheless decided to restore people’s ability to earn a living. In December, the ban triggered mass unrest among miners in Lualaba province. Notably, the renewed authorization will apply only to Lualaba.

✉️ The government says that following the reopening it will send letters to companies outlining the shortcomings they are expected to correct. In this way, public anger over the tightening of controls in the mining sector is being shifted from Kinshasa onto companies themselves.

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📺 Revolving Doors in Sahara 📺

Niger Replaces Its Oil Minister Yet Again

🌐 A year after the replacement of the head of the ministry most critical to the country’s economy, Niger has once again handed the post to a new figure. The new oil minister is Hamadou Tinni, who replaces Sahabi Oumarou — himself appointed in August 2024.

⏩ As is customary in Niamey, the reasons behind the constant reshuffling at this key ministry are not disclosed. Niger’s oil sector has shown explosive growth in recent years, and aside from recurring disputes with the Chinese company CNPC and occasional pipeline sabotage by insurgents, there are few signs of any serious crisis.

⏩ Given that the new minister is widely described as an accounting specialist, it is reasonable to assume that the logic behind the reshuffle is to fine-tune a system capable of capturing a larger share of budget revenues from oil exports, whose volume has more than tripled since 2023.

🔖 For Niger, the management of oil remains a matter of utmost importance, as crude exports via Benin are the country’s main source of foreign currency and the financial backbone of the government.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 The Oil Apocalypse Is Postponed 📺

Ghana Hopes to Keep Its Oil Fields Viable Until 2040

🌐 Against the backdrop of a looming production crisis, Ghana is extending the licenses of its two operating oil projects — the Jubilee and TEN fields — by several years. At the same time, the state-owned GNPC is expected to receive an additional 10% stake in both assets.

❗️ The licenses for Jubilee and TEN were due to expire in 2034–2036, roughly the same time their oil is expected to be depleted. With no new discoveries so far, this would have meant a premature death of Ghana’s oil sector, which was born in 2010 with the launch of Jubilee.

⏩ Instead, the lifespan of both projects is now expected to be extended to 2040 through the drilling of new wells. In parallel, in 2036 GNPC will increase its stake in both projects by 10%, i.e. to 17%.

⏩ The government is actively trying to turn oil production from a temporary venture into a fully-fledged sector of the Ghanaian economy, pursuing onshore exploration while also courting foreign partners for further exploration efforts.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🇺🇸 How Trump Is Threatening You Personally 🇺🇸

Nigeria, Niger, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon — if you live in any of these places, Trump is threatening you.

🌐 It’s unlikely that you personally will be kidnapped, taken away, and tried for drug charges in New York. It’s also unlikely that an American missile will land on your head anytime soon — although, who knows? Does that mean Trump’s actions in Venezuela will have no impact on you?

❌ No — they will affect you in the most direct way.

💸 While the details of how Donald Trump wants to use Venezuela’s oil are still to be worked out, one thing is already clear — he plans to sell it aggressively. If he succeeds (which is not guaranteed though) it will crush the already low oil prices of around $60 a barrel.

🛢️ All of the countries listed above are still living off oil in 2026. In every one of them, oil accounts for more than half of exports, and at least in Nigeria, Angola, Congo, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon, oil makes up >10% of budget revenues.

⚡️ That means there will be less money. True, business elites and beloved children of corrupt officials will also feel it, but ordinary citizens are to bear the brunt. Even the most corrupt states do provide some services — from pensions and subsidies to public construction and counterterrorism efforts.

▶️ And these things, not kickbacks and offshore schemes, will be cut first.

⬇️ Governments that failed to build diversified economies will be forced either to slash spending or to dive into new debts from the IMF or China.

↗️ That said, there is also an unlikely yet positive scenario: with investing in oil getting less profitable, governments might finally turn their attention to such marginal and “unscientific” tools of economic policy as developing agriculture, manufacturing, or IT.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🇿🇲 Zambian Authorities Forgive the Chinese 🇿🇲

💧 Nearly a year after the major tailings dam spill, which released thousands of litres of acidic materials into Zambia's soil and rivers, including the major Kafue river, the authorities officially publish an environmental damage report — one that recognizes only 160 people as direct victims.

💧 Released on January 5, the report on the February tailings dam collapse near Kitwe, not far from the Zambia–DRC border, identified only 5.35 km² of affected soil and some traces of contamination in local rivers, declaring acidic levels in the key Kafue river to be “within acceptable bounds.” Only 158 people living were recognized as unquestionable victims of the spill.

▶️ Between June and September, the Zambian government and the Chinese company Sino-Metals, responsible for the spill, replaced the firm conducting the study. Instead of a South African company that had been working on site in the wake of the spill, a new laboratory was hired.

🔴 The South African firm then overtly said it had been fired because it had exposed the real severity of consequences of Sino-Metals’ negligence, which it estimated at 1.5 million tonnes of toxic material released.

Hiring a new laboratory more than 6 months after the accident — when all possible contaminants had already floated downstream — effectively shuts the door on any future chance for local communities to obtain compensation from either the authorities or the Chinese company.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 Africa's Ever-Troubled Roads 📺

DRC promises protection to Zambians as unrest threatens cross-border traffic

🌐 Crimes against cargo trucks along the shared border, particularly near the Kasumbalesa crossing, prompted a meeting on January 6 between the Zambian ambassador and the DRC’s Vice Prime Minister for the Interior and Security Jacquemin Shabani, who promised measures to curb illegal activities.

🏹 Zambia’s concerns stem from attacks both by ordinary criminals, who hijack trucks carrying copper products for resale amid high copper prices, and from periodic surges of discontent among the local population.

🔥 The latest unrest in Kolwezi, sparked by restrictions on artisanal copper and cobalt mining, also saw disruptions of the movement of mineral trucks, while some sources reported a deadly accident involving a Zambian truck driver.

↗️ Zambia’s concern is just another symptom of Kinshasa’s detachment from the realities of ordinary people at the far end of the country. As direct mechanisms of democratic signaling between the authorities and the population continue to fail, making the Congolese government listen to its people requires real victims — and an intervention of a foreign ambassador.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 Nigeria’s Oil Dossier 📺

Who Profits from the Most Lucrative Sector of the Nigerian Economy

All Nigeria’s oil industry is divided into 3 parts — each with its own heroes and villains: upstream production, oil processing, and the sale of petroleum products, including fuel imports from abroad.

🛢 Production:

⏩ Production is dominated by foreign companies, although in recent years — following the exit of some foreign majors from onshore projects — an ever larger share of the market has been taken over by so-called “indigenous” firms owned by local elites. The most dynamic player among them is Heirs Energies, owned by Tony Elumelu, chairman of United Bank for Africa, who leverages his banking-sector connections to expand the company. Recently, Heirs acquired the largest stake in another local firm, Seplat.

🏭 Refining:

⏩ In refining, the undisputed heavyweight is Aliko Dangote’s Dangote Oil Refinery, which is far ahead of all operating competitors and is, in effect, Nigeria's only refinery in its weight class.

🚩NNPC:

⏩ A significant role at every level is played by the state-owned NNPC, which manages the government’s stakes in upstream projects, owns a share in the Dangote refinery, operates several large refineries of its own, and runs a retail network.

💵 Sale:

⏩ Finally, the import and sales segment features an entire constellation of local and foreign firms, including Oando Plc, owned by Wale Tinubu, a nephew of the sitting president, which is also active in oil production. More recently, Aliko Dangote himself has announced plans to enter the retail market as well.

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📺 Geopolitical Empty Talk 📺

Botswana Invites Russia to Invest in Its Mining Sector

“We hope to make use of Russia’s knowledge and expertise in large-scale mining projects, as well as in processing industries that create added value. These are precisely the areas where we see opportunities for cooperation,” the country’s foreign minister said.

⏩ At the same time, Gaborone is opening its embassy in Moscow. Russia has had an ambassador to Botswana since 1976.

While the opening of an embassy is an important step, it is highly unlikely that Russia will come for Botswana’s minerals. Russians are largely unable to operate abroad due to American and European sanctions and have only a minimal presence in Africa, making it improbable that Russians will appear in Botswana anytime soon.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🌐 Weekly News Digest [ January 5 – January 11 ]

That was the first full-fledged week of the new year of 2026, during which rulers forgave those who polluted their land, dismissed those who were managing their oil.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇧🇼 Botswana

— Botswana Invites Russia to Invest in Its Mining Sector

🇨🇩 DR Congo

— Congolese clergy speaks against the US-DRC agreement.
— The government allows processing units to accept ore from artisanal miners amid protests

🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea

— Equatorial Guinea moves its capital to a brand new city built on oil revenues

🇬🇭 Ghana

— A Ghanaian prophet predicts the discovery of major onshore oil deposits in Ghana
— Ghana hopes to keep its oil fields viable until 2040

🇲🇱 Mali

— JNIM militants attack a gold mine in southeastern Mali

🇳🇪 Niger

— Niger replaces its oil minister

🇳🇬 Nigeria

— President reshuffles the country's oil sector management

🇸🇩 Sudan

— Sudan’s central bank and Sudanese Mineral Resources Company set up a joint commission to curb illegal gold exports.

🇺🇬 Uganda

— Uganda to start its first oil exports by October, despite environmental concerns

🇿🇲 Zambia

— First report on the toxic pollution caused by a Chinese company designates 160 people as victims
— Zambia is concerned over the safety of its workers in southern DRC

#NewsDigest

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 The DRC to Send 100,000 Tonnes of Copper to the US 📺

Peace in Congo Remains Elusive, but Resources for Trump Are on the Way

🇺🇸 Under agreements signed with the US in early December, the Congolese state-owned company Gécamines plans to ship as much as 100,000 tonnes of copper to the US market in 2026. The move looks like an attempt to get back Trump’s focus, shifted from peace between the DRC and Albania Rwanda to Venezuela and Greenland.

⏩ In early December, the DRC signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Washington, and the US Development Finance Corporation backed a joint venture between Gécamines and the Swiss trader Mercuria, through which the deliveries in question will now be carried out.

📈 Overfulfilment of the Plan

⏩ The DRC has already granted the US preferential access to its resources, but commercial copper shipments have never been explicitly discussed. Publicly, the DRC only committed to give the US facilitated access to ore extraction and build a strategic mineral reserve for the US.

⏩ Ironically, to sell copper to the United States, Gécamines will first have to buy it from the Chinese. The 100,000 tonnes of copper are to come from the Tenke Fungurume mine of the Chinese company CMOC.

The scale of the DRC’s alignment with the US thus turns out to be even greater than Washington initially asked for — but still it may not bring the long awaited peace to eastern Congo.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🏹 A Former Warlord Buys American Drones to Hunt for Oil Thieves in Nigeria 🏹

(👆 and it's not the beginning of a funny joke)

🌐 While in northern Nigeria US drones are looking for terrorists (and gathering intelligence in the Sahel), a private security company plans to draw on US experience with unmanned vehicles to track down oil thieves in the Niger Delta.

🚓 The future purchaser of US drones is Tantita Security Services allegedly owned by a former anti-government insurgent and once Nigeria’s most wanted criminal Ekpumupolo (aka Tompolo). His quasi-army turned into a PMC-like security firm when the government, in the early 2010s, offered the former militants amnesty and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for switching sides and guarding oil assets.

💸 Now the former leader of the struggle against the exploitation of the Niger Delta offers infrastructure protection to half of Nigeria’s oil players — from the state-owned NNPC to the rising local company Seplat to the global giant Chevron—continuing to make money from oil theft, only in a different way.

🚙 For Tompolo, American surveillance drones will be mere toys: according to journalists, since 2012 in his collection he has already had at least 6 armed torpedo boats and one 1700-ton support shop, acquired from the Norwegian military. All to deliver on security contracts.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 When It’s Not Just the Country That’s Collapsing 📺

⚡️ According to local Sudanese media, on Saturday 10 people were killed in a simultaneous collapse of five artisanal gold mine wells in South Kordofan, with dozens more still trapped under the rubble.

↗️ Despite a quite fast arrival of government representatives, rescue efforts are facing extreme difficulty due to the lack of excavators in the mining area and essentially any heavy equipment at all. So the debris has to be cleared by hand, with shovels.

❓ By popular estimates (i.e., rough guesses, since it is impossible to count precisely), around 2 million Sudanese are involved today in artisanal gold mining - like the whole Equatorial Guinea's population, but multiplied by 1.3. As a result, such collapses happen often, and many never receive wide coverage.

At the same time, rescue efforts are even more complicated by the absence of infrastructure and ongoing fighting. South Kordofan is right now a contested area — so while miners risk dying underground, people on the surface may enjoy drones and shells overhead.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

📺 Populism, Gold and Corruption 📺

How to make it to the presidency on obscure river-restoration contracts

🇿🇼 The government of Zimbabwe has restricted by decree the list of companies which may engage in rehabilitation of rivers polluted by gold mining, according to media reports. As if by coincidence, the only item on the list is a pilot project run by the president Mnangagwa’s adviser, mogul Tempter Paul Tungwarara.

⏩ Tungwarara belongs to the breed of Zimbabwean businessmen who enrich on exclusive government contracts. The expertise of his companies, Prevail Group, is the implementation of state populism: Mnangagwa's adviser builds boreholes as part of the presidential vision to drill 35,000 of them countrywide, installs solar panels, and is developing a $500 million “Cyber City” near Harare.

⏩ True, cleaning rivers polluted by illegal mining is not as lucrative as mining itself, but such initiatives make the government look like it really cares about urgent problems, while allowing Tungwarara to get political points by showcasing his for-people projects at rallies he attends across the country.

❗️This may mean a quiet emergence of a new presidential hopeful in Zimbabwe. Although one of Zimbabwe's wealthiest men actively denies having any presidential ambitions, the image of an entrepreneur who brings technological benefits and cleans mercury from rivers may certainly help him climb the political ladder, even if he stops short of going for presidency with Mnangagwa alive.

It is reported that since December the ruling Zanu-PF party has been considering Tungwarara's candidacy for the party's Central Committee.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🌟 Hesitation is Defeat - Trump

US president has threatened to kept cautious companies out of Venezuelan oil

🌟 At first glance, American companies whose assets Hugo Chávez "took away" in 2007 and Trump, who wants to make money on Venezuelan oil, seem destined to act as a team. But true to his habit of wielding politics with an axe and not a scalpel, Trump has already begun picking fights even with oil producers.

🛢 After ExxonMobile's CEO said the company would need serious guarantees from Washington before returning to Venezuela, Trump responded that he plans to keep Exxon out. Earlier, at a meeting with representatives of major companies on Friday, the US president said that oil giants would be expected to invest around $100 billion in Venezuela.

▶️ So far only trading companies have shown readiness to touch Venezuelan oil, which pushed the US towards introducing a new legislation protecting the potential oil sales revenues from seizure by former creditors or other entities.

🔴 Without any desire to defend oil corporations, it is still worth noting that operating in a country from which the president was brazenly (and so to say illegally) spirited away is not the best idea. Yet Trump appears unwilling to offer his own companies any institutional guarantees for their involvement in Venezuelan oil affairs. He wants oil right away—and for companies to depend directly on his personal will and his continued hold on power.

#Global

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Benin Reopens the National Treasure

🫂 Ghana, hoping to extended the life of its oil fields to 2040 and thereby remain in the oil producers league, may finally no longer feel alone in West Africa: by the end of the month, Singapore-based Akrake Petroleum wants to relaunch oil production at the 56-year old Sèmè field in Benin.

🦖 Benin’s offshore field is a true dinosaur, keenly sensing weakness among its Ghanaian counterparts, which were discovered in the 2010s and are already threatening to run dry by 2035. The Sèmè field is a contemporary of the Moon landing: it had been discovered in 1969, produced oil since 1982 and was shut down in 1998.

🚢 The Beninese have not obtained their own refinery since then, which is logical. But all the necessary infrastructure for exports by sea is already in place, which is very convenient. All thanks to the pipeline from Niger, through which Benin already exports oil, albeit for now not its own.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

▫️ Post-Truth in the Age of Gold Rush ▫️

Mozambique's remote area shows that facts are no more in the age of digitalization

⚡️This week, in Mozambique’s northern province of Nampula the Migration Service detained 5 Chinese nationals and other foreign nationals for informal gold mining and unlawful stay.

⏩ Officials say the detainees carried fake ID papers and residence documents that didn't correspond state databases — which means there might have been created "a parallel machine to that of the State printing documents for nationals and foreigners". Gold thus attracts paperwork of its own.

🔥 This arrest lands inside a tense moment in Mozambique's remote region of Nampula. Since late December civil society groups and the Government have been engaged in an informational tug of war over what the former call deadly clashes between the police and miners in Mogovolas district on December 29.

🏹 The government claims the police involuntarily killed 7 people that day in the act of counter-insurgency self-defense, while the interpretation of the human rights activists implies that up to 38 illegal gold miners were murdered. The police in this reading of events had allegedly demanded informal payments from miners, which triggered a violent escalation.

Some may see today's endless flow of information as a remedy against clandestine illegal activities or as a tool of bringing unpleasant facts to the spotlight. However, in practice it more and more often helps criminals, governments and interested groups distort the reality in the way they need.

⏮Independent, Honest, Yours - @devilsbelow 🔸

📺 Menu À la Carte 📺

The Congolese people offer yet another gift to the US comrades

🤝 As another step within the framework of the December “Washington Accords,” DRC is officially preparing to send the US a list of mineral projects for American investors to take over.

➡️ After the state-owned Gécamines announced a few days ago plans to supply up to 100,000 tonnes of copper to the American market in 2026, this move may become the penultimate step on the DRC’s path toward fulfilling its mineral obligations to Washington.

Under the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed in Washington on December 4, Congo committed to create a Strategic Asset Reserve — a special fund for resource assets managed by a joint commission. The fund would include a list of projects involving critical minerals and gold reserved for American investors. The DRC also promised to constantly update the fund adding new assets.

As Donald Trump increasingly shifts his personality from peacemaker to warmonger, Kinshasa’s growing courtship of Trump — beyond its hope of once again drawing his attention to peacemaking in eastern Congo — can also be explained by a desire to push aside Chinese players who directly or indirectly control up to 80% of mineral extraction in the country.

⏮Independent, Honest, Yours - @devilsbelow 🔸

📺 Blood on the Blasting Cable 📺

Mine “revival” keeps finding new ways to cost Copperbelt families

Two Zambian contractor workers died on January 13 at Mopani Copper Mines’ shaft in Kitwe in an explosion during underground work linked to a blasting cable.

ℹ️ This accident stroke during a prolonged reset of the mine. In 2021 the Zambian government bought Mopani for just $1 from its previous Swiss owner Glencore — but as part of this agreement, the mine's production and revenues would be used to repay to Glencore it investments in Mopani, initially acquired by the Swiss trader in the 2000s.

The resulting lack of funds to refresh the infrastructure at the site has already turned Mopani into a frontline-like zone, with fatal accidents linked to technical failures occurring almost on a yearly basis.

⏮Independent, Honest, Yours - @devilsbelow 🔸