Page 7 - AfrOil Week 15 2022

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

SAMIR’s doors closed as debts had left it unable firm Carlyle Group could not appeal that
to finance fresh purchases of crude feedstock, insurance cover its $396mn loss from SAMIR’s
and Saudi-Ethiopian majority owner Mohamed liquidation.
al-Amoudi reneged on a promised capital injec- According to court documents, the July
tion. His Swedish-based Corrall Petroleum 2020 decision by Justice O. Peter Sherwood to
Holdings held a 67% stake in the company. reject Carlyle’s assertion that its oil had in effect
In late September 2016, Corrall’s legal ave- been stolen by SAMIR had been “unanimously
nues were exhausted, as the Court of Cassation reversed”.
confirmed the verdict, ruling that the wind-up The plaintiffs (Carlyle) sought to “recover
should proceed. Creditors owed part of SAMIR’s excess marine cargo insurance policy for losses
estimated MAD44bn ($4.6bn) debt queued up they sustained when a Moroccan oil refinery
to have their claims validated by the courts in became insolvent. Under the arrangement
order to secure a slice of the proceeds from the between plaintiff Carlyle Commodities Man-
sell-off. agement LLC, then known as Vermillion Asset
In late July 2018, the Casablanca Commer- Management LLC, and the refinery, Carlyle
cial Court of Appeal ruled that the local Banque would pay for crude oil that the refinery had
Centrale Populaire (BCP) – a major lender to contracted to purchase from third-party suppli-
the company – had obtained valid guaran- ers, and the refinery would subsequently repur-
tees against lending of MAD1.2bn of debt, out chase the oil from Carlyle.”
of total borrowings from the bank of around The fund filed a claim with its insurers Lloyd’s
MAD2.9bn. of London to recover the value of the crude “after
BCP thereby secured a place as a senior cred- the Moroccan government froze the refinery’s
itor, with privileged claims on liquidated assets. bank accounts, rendering the refinery unable to
A month earlier Glencore – another major cred- repurchase the commodities”.
itor – had a claim of MAD2.2bn validated. Then in September 2020, London-based
Then in 2019, trading giants Glencore and infrastructure financer Elite Capital broke off
Trafigura submitted lowball bids of $14.99mn talks to acquire SAMIR’s assets following two
and $11.7mn respectively to acquire the refinery, years of discussions, citing a “flaw” in the pro-
only for little-known British firm Exol Lubri- posed deal. ™
cants to make an even lower offer of $8.23mn.
Each of these was a far cry from the adminis-
trator’s initial asset valuation of $2.5-3bn and
were seen as derisory, though with much of
the $4.6bn of debts still outstanding – $1.4bn
of which was due to Rabat – the low price may
have been justifiable.
The offers appeared to expire with little fan-
fare, while in May 2020, the judge appointed
to the liquidation accepted a state offer to rent
SAMIR’s 2mn cubic metre storage facilities as
Morocco sought to insulate consumers from oil
price volatility.
In April 2021, a New York court of appeal
reversed a July 2020 ruling that US investment The oil-processing plant has a throughput capacity of 200,000 bpd (Image: SAMIR)

Nigeria’s Aiteo Group sees debt

from oil loans mushroom to $1.7bn

NIGERIA THE Nigerian energy conglomerate Aiteo years ago, for an overall total of $1.5bn. Shell also
Group’s debt to supermajor Shell (UK) and provided $504mn in financing for the deal.
seven different banks has mushroomed to This money has not yet been repaid, and it is
$1.7bn, and some observers are warning that the this sum that has been at the centre of a legal dis-
country’s financial system could be seriously hit pute since October 2019, when Aiteo defaulted
if lenders are not repaid. on its debt.
Aiteo Eastern E&P, the Africa-focused explo- The amount owed has now reached $1.7bn,
ration and production arm of the company, pur- growing rapidly from $300mn in late 2019, due
chased a pipeline and oil blocks with help from to missed payments, unpaid interest and penal-
multiple international and Nigerian banks seven ties for defaulting.

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