The Guardian is reporting that the UK and U.S. may announce during George’s formal visit next week a joint effort to secure oil rights in Africa that have been in the planning stages since Blair’s visit to the Texas ranch in April of last year.
You can read extracts from a report prepared by American commerce secretary Don Evans and energy secretary Spencer Abraham at this link:
Read extracts from the document
Excellent background articles can be found here and here.
The Guardian article includes a quip about not being able to trust the ‘volatile’ Middle East. Africa and Central Asia aren’t?
The BBC reports that the European companies Royal Dutch/Shell and Total ‘have signed a $2bn deal to develop Saudi Arabia’s huge gas reserves’.
While Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal described it as being a ‘token investment’, “it does give Shell and Total a key foothold in the country with the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves”.
The WSJ [#11] last February interviewed BP chief executive Lord John Browne as to why he was willing to risk a venture in a hostile environment with adversaries who’d done him wrong in the past. The observation was made that he “once again seems to be betting that later, safer deals will be on worse terms for foreigners.”
In more old news Simon Kukes, former President/CEO of Tyumen, was named to replace jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky as chief executive of Yukos.
If I’d known about this link while putting together yesterday’s post, it might have turned out quite a bit differently.