Patrice Trovoada, the son of immediate past Sao Tome president Miguel Trovoada, was removed after parliamentary hearings determined he was too close to an independent Nigerian energy firm, albeit one that had not won a block. Rita, a former Secretary of State and foreign affairs minister of Sao Tome, was fired from the council but retained his post in the de Menezes cabinet after he was deemed to be too close to ERHC Energy chairman Sir Emeka Offor.
With one vote on each side now gone, if a quorum remains the National Petroleum Council can take a vote to approve the awards recommended last week by the Joint Ministerial Council that ultimately controls the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone.
If it does so, that would be good news for investors who faced delays while the impasse over undue influence - what Vice President and leader of Parliament Carlos Neves called "grave irregularities" - persisted, blocking the "unanimity" that President de Menezes told the Portuguese news agency Lusa Friday is needed to finalize the awards of five blocks in the JDZ.
There were baffling aspects to the news. First, there was no mention of Mateus Rita in the Reuters story; second, the announcement was made by a Nigerian, Joint Development Authority spokesman Sam Dimka, a figure often quoted here and on the Raging Bull ERHE message board by investors who contact him for the latest news about the awards process, but never before with respect to Sao Tome's presidential cabinet-level appointees.
Dimka assured investors after returning from Sao Tome last Saturday that "things had been smoothed over" to make the awards possible soon.
Here is the Reuters story:
Sao Tome sacks oil adviser before licence award
by Felix Onuah
05/07/05 19:16 ET
ABUJA, May 7 (Reuters) - The president of Sao Tome and Principe sacked his petroleum adviser on Saturday just before the tiny African island nation was due to make an eagerly awaited oil licence award, authorities said.
A spokesman for the Joint Development Authority, a body created with Nigeria to administer a disputed offshore area where the licensing is taking place, said the move was made public in a presidential decree signed on Saturday.
"By this decree Patrice Emery Trovoada is dismissed as adviser on petroleum," spokesman Sam Dimka quoted the decree number 4/205 as saying.
The decree did not say why the adviser, a former president's son and seen as a possible candidate in next year's presidential election, was removed.
Sao Tome and Principe is located in the centre of the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, where several major oil discoveries over the last 10 years have turned it into one of the world's exploration hotspots.
Sao Tome itself currently produces no oil, but geologists believe its offshore areas could contain giant new fields.
The United States hopes to import a quarter of its oil from the Gulf of Guinea region in a decade, from 14 percent now.
A tiny and impoverished nation of 170,000 people, Sao Tome has been rocked by coup attempts and accusations of corruption as it prepares to become the latest African petro-state.
President Fradique de Menezes survived a military coup in 2003 by giving the military rights to oversee oil deals amid accusations of corruption. In May last year, four ministers were reshuffled in a political row over shady oil deals.
Last June Sao Tome sacked two senior members of the joint authority for unspecified reasons and nominated one of its citizens to replace a Nigerian at the head of the body. The authority released a statement in the same month saying bribery of licensing officials would not be tolerated.
The authority is currently engaged in its second licensing round for five oil blocks. The first round was aborted after awarding just one exploration contract, for $123 million, to a consortium led by U.S. giant ChevronTexaco .
The second round went through the bidding stage in December, receiving bids as high as $175 million, but the governments have yet to announce the winners and given no explanation for the delay.
2 comments:
FYI, Portugal´s RDP-Africa radio reporting this morning ex-STP that President de Menezes´ dismissal of his oil adviser, Patrice Trovoada, was prompted by the official's allegations of "irregularities" in the JDZ block awards process Friday before parliament´s commission on oil affairs.
Trovoada, interviewed by RDP-Africa, lamented that his sacking by presidential decree Saturday had taken place without his having been first informed by de Menezes.
But Trovoada said he was "thankful" to the president because he now gained "a space of liberty" to publicly express his opinions and disagreements with the head of state.
Bests,
P.S.
Trovoada also told RDP-Africa that he felt the president should not be involved in the current stage of the "oil dossier" as the STP and Nigerian presidents were "fuses", points of last recourse, in the bilateral decision-making scheme.
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