Page 9 - AfrOil Week 18 2022

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Galp is a shareholder in six exploration licences institution known as Millenium bcp.)
and five active development projects in the Equity in Amorim Energia is split 55% to
south-western African country. Américo Amorim, the current head of the
At the same time, the firm also has ties to Amorim Group, and 45% to an offshore hold-
Angola’s national oil company (NOC) Sonan- ing known as Esperanza. This holding is owned
gol. The latter holds a 33.34% stake in Galp jointly by Sonangol and Isabel dos Santos, Afri-
through a complicated arrangement involving ca’s richest woman and the daughter of Angola’s
Amorim Energia, a subsidiary of the Amorim former President José Eduardo dos Santos.
Group, which is the world’s leading cork pro- Angolan government officials have said that
ducer. (Amorim Group also owns 19% in Banco Sonangol’s indirect stake in Galp will not be sub-
Comercial Português, a Portuguese financial ject to privatisation, as it is a “strategic” asset. ™

ReconAfrica and NAMCOR extend

deadline for deal on Kavango stake

NAMIBIA CANADA’S Reconnaissance Energy Africa 9,921 square km. It has already carried out seis-
(ReconAfrica) and Namibia’s national oil com- mic work at the Namibian block and has also
pany (NOC) have agreed to push the end date of drilled two exploration wells there.
their letter of intent (LoI) on the sale of part of Indeed, the Canadian company signed a joint
the latter’s stake in an onshore licence area in the operating agreement (JOA) with NAMCOR last
Kavango basin back to June 6, 2022. year, not long after finding evidence of a working
ReconAfrica announced the extension to the conventional petroleum system in 6-1, its sec-
LoI in a statement dated April 28, saying it had ond exploration well at PEL 73.
pledged to spend the extra time working toward This marked its second discovery since the
a mutually satisfying agreement with National beginning of 2021, as the first exploration well
Petroleum Corp. of Namibia (NAMCOR). drilled at the block – 6-2, drilled 16 km to the
As announced in February, the parties are south – also contained a working conventional
looking to negotiate a deal that will allow Recon- petroleum system. ™
Africa to acquire half of the state-owned com-
pany’s 10% carried stake in PEL 73, a block that
covers an area of around 6.3mn acres (25,500
square km) in north-eastern Namibia.
Other than the closing date of the LoI, NAM-
COR and its Canadian partner have not changed
any terms of the deal as originally proposed, the
statement noted. ReconAfrica had said in Feb-
ruary that it was ready to offer 5mn shares of its
own common stock, worth a total of CAD31.75
(with a face value of CAD6.35 per share), plus
$2mn in cash, for half of NAMCOR’s holdings.
The deal was originally due to have been
closed by the end of March.
ReconAfrica is exploring two sections of the
Greater Kavango basin – PEL 73 in north-east-
ern Namibia and PEL001, an adjacent block in
north-western Botswana that covers an area of ReconAfrica has found two working petroleum systems (Image: ReconAfrica)

Zimbabwe to repay Trafigura debt in kind

ZIMBABWE ZIMBABWE has negotiated a deal with global The southern African country ran up the
commodities trader Trafigura Group to repay debt after buying petroleum products with
$225.6mn in debt for past fuel supplies of using loans from Singapore-based Trafigura from
mineral export revenues, Bloomberg reports. 2016, according to the news agency.

Week 18 04•May•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P9