Sudan’s gold rush – state-inspired?
The army medical orderly tells me he has seen men die in front of him, crushed by wells that collapsed in the middle of Sudan’s desert. And in the next breath he tells me if I have any money to invest, he’ll join me to dig for gold in Kordofan: “All we need are a more »
An open letter to the Mozambican government
Following is an open letter to Esperanca Bias, Mozambique’s Minister of Resources, on the occasion of Mozambique’s accession to the EITI mechanism. It is jointly signed by OpenOil and the Center for Pubic Integrity, a research institute and NGO based in Maputo. Dear Minister Bias, This year, 2013, is of unprecedented importance in ensuring good more »
Oil and corruption in Uganda: the foreign donors’ plight
If this had been the UN, we might have sent a strongly worded statement to the Norwegians. They were absent from a forum in the heart of Africa on the corrupting effects of oil, an affliction for which Norway, more than any other nation, seemingly knows the cure. It wasn’t the UN – it was more »
Invitation to an open discussion in Cairo, Sunday, April 7th
This Sunday, April 7th in Cairo, OpenOil invites all journalists and activists working on the extractive industries in Egypt to an open discussion: “Civil Society & the Egyptian Oil & Gas industry – how can we drive Transparency in the Digital Age?”
What’s at stake in Uganda’s oil bills?
It’s been seven years since Uganda first struck oil. But the stuff still isn’t flowing and won’t be for a while, even though a landmark oil bill finally passed in December and many in the government are eager to start pumping. If you’re part of the Ugandan equivalent of the ‘drill baby drill’ crowd – more »
Yes but what do we REALLY know about the Niger Delta?
Nigeria is possibly the world’s best known exemplar of Resource Curse. There are – literally – coffee table books of poor people covered in oil with polluted lakes and gas flares behind them. I have one. There’s even something a little disturbing about the degree to which the Delta has become disaster porn, a morality more »
South Sudan is surviving without oil — barely
About a month ago, President Salva Kiir said South Sudan’s oil production would restart in a week. Famous last words, it turns out – not a drop of crude has come through the pipeline since. It’s not that there’s no urgency: at the time of the shut-down in January, the government relied on oil for 98% of more »
From Kampala – Uganda oil wiki launch in 3…2…1…
We’re excited to be launching our latest oil wiki, the Uganda Oil Almanac, today at the Hotel Africana in Kampala, Uganda. Starting now, the first open source reference for the Ugandan oil industry will be housed on the website of the Uganda Radio Network (URN), at oil.ugandaradionetwork.com. URN have taken ownership of the wiki and more »
Uganda seeks a refined place in the oil world
The other day in Kampala my boda-boda swerved around a truck headed west on a highway in the city’s outskirts. The trailer had PETROLEUM FOR EXPORT stenciled in faded letters on its side. As we shot past the big transporter barreling down the road, I wondered – Uganda isn’t producing oil yet. What is it doing exporting… more »
How an oil dividend might be possible in South Sudan
OpenOil continues its’ series of analyses on the possibility of oil dividends commissioned by the Center for Global Development As South Sudanese is about to resume it oil production soon, we have tried to model the possibility of an oil-to-cash dividend for the newly independent state. The thinking, as ever, in a direct distribution is more »
Petro-politics in Uganda: get-rich-quick won’t pay
What does an oil sector in its infancy look like from the inside? Our researcher Amrit Naresh is in Kampala, Uganda for three weeks working with Uganda Radio Network to launch a new wiki on Uganda’s oil. This is the first in a series of blogs he’ll post while there. At a pub Monday night more »
Oil contracts in Uganda
Blog contributed by Lynn Turyatemba, a participant in next week’s contracts booksprint. Lynn is a lawyer by profession with a leaning towards social justice. She has for the last three years, while working with Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) as the Extractives Industries Governance Officer, worked closely with all stakeholders in the oil and more »
Upstream Petroleum Contracts: Where the “Rubber Hits the Road” in a Petroleum Regime
Blog contributed by Jay Park, a partner with Norton Rose, who will be one of the ‘sprinters’ in our booksprint initiative to write “How to Read and Understand Oil Contracts”. Zara Rahman’s recent blog post described OpenOil’s initiative to do a ‘booksprint’ to write a book about “How to Read and Understand an Oil Contract”. more »
The story of Niger, or how not to have an oil boom while your people starve
There can’t be many countries who face famine as their GDP rises by 14%. Yet that is the situation in the West African state of Niger, where the World Food Program, the International Red Cross, Oxfam and other humanitarian agencies launched appeals this week to help some 400,000 people now at risk from severe malnutrition. more »
The Search for Golden Opportunities in the Land of Gold
(first in a series of blogs bringing the voice of people in or affected by the oil industry all over the world – ed) As a little girl I loved flying and always thought I’d be an Airhostess so I could spend as much time flying as possible. Later my passion was shifted to Pharmacy more »
