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Remaining 2006 Stock Market Holidays
Memorial Day May 29
Independence Day July 4
Labor Day September 4
Thanksgiving Day November 23
Christmas December 25
rheddle, This moderator did some checking and this is what I found. 7 posts with the spelling of "proofs" now with this post eight.
chcr
PublicMsgSearch Results search on: "proofs" in board: ERHC Energy Inc.
Subject Author Date/Time
"Proofs" again - moderator's should check. Petrostar yesterday rheddle 5/26/2006 7:50:48 AM
I can't take credit, it was Max. rocky822 5/26/2006 7:40:04 AM
I took a peek behind bars and saw sllabxam 5/26/2006 1:57:12 AM
Wow, you are very astute, magicatlast. I made littleBitmoore1 5/25/2006 12:12:58 PM
Petrostar "proofs" should be "proves". Lurn ow tu rheddle 5/25/2006 11:47:36 AM
LowFloatGoat. The discussions started with my opinion that petrotsar 5/25/2006 11:31:02 AM
Proof... Main Entry: 1proof TheDane 4/3/2006 1:16:11 PM
O.K. board NO MORE PERSONAL attacks or the deletions start.
chcr
Hdotmycom, You have your moderators confused. LOL
chcr
LOL, the computer glitch. Thank you!
Hi Susie924, The number is 54950 on the ERHE board. I am able to call it up but another post said they are not.
chcr
Hi Susie924, No that is not the case the post is still there.
chcr
Hi Matt, Some times when I call up a old post in the go to post box it calls up the wrong post most times its the post before. This is also happening to other posters on the ERHE board. Any ideas why? I am guessing a server problem? But what would I know.
chcr
texasspeculator, Thanks and do not feel bad I did not know I had a mailbox for almost a year. LOL
Thanks oliver spud, I was sleeping on the job. LOL ERHE chart updated.
chcr
whp= Well Head Preasure...eom
The Scarlet E is a ugly letter. LOL ERHE is heading in the right direction now. GLTA
chcr
O.K. board back ON TOPIC no more personal attacks! Or the deletions will start!
Yahoo has ERHE back. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ERHE.OB
ERHC ENERGY INC (OTC BB:ERHE.OB) Delayed quote data
Last Trade: 0.629
Trade Time: May 23
Change: 0.00 (0.00%)
Prev Close: 0.629
Open: N/A
Bid: 0.625 x 2500
Ask: 0.635 x 2500
1y Target Est: N/A
Day's Range: N/A - N/A
52wk Range: 0.26 - 0.99
Volume: 0
Avg Vol (3m): 2,653,330
Market Cap: 447.16M
P/E (ttm): N/A
EPS (ttm): N/A
Div & Yield: N/A (N/A)
LA Times Article
Posted on RB by TheDane:
Sinking Its Hopes Into a Tiny Nation
Obscure Texas oil firm, amid claims of bribery, secures a deal with poor Sao Tome and Principe.
By Ken Silverstein
Times Staff Writer
May 24, 2003
HOUSTON -- Environmental Remediation Holding Corp. has one full-time employee at its headquarters here.
It hasn't reported a penny of revenue for four years and has piled up more than $30 million in losses. Its stock price hovers around 17 cents a share.
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ERHC&read=11156
Yet thanks to its sole asset -- a contract that gives it a major stake in a tiny West African nation's oil fields -- the obscure Texas oil company appears to be on the verge of a stunning turnaround.
ERHC secured its oil rights from Sao Tome and Principe, an island nation so poor that it supplements its budget by issuing commemorative stamps of Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles and other celebrities.
The company's oil contract, made final last month, gives it rights to two offshore fields in Sao Tome's territorial waters and a significant share in deposits in an area jointly controlled by Sao Tome and Nigeria.
About 4 billion barrels of crude are believed to lie beneath those waters. Without a drilling rig to its name, ERHC could reap hundreds of millions of dollars from its holdings. The company has not revealed its plans, but analysts predict it will sell its interest to one of the industry giants.
That a small energy speculator could get such a lucrative foothold in Sao Tome has mystified experts, who suspect the company benefited from the country's inexperience in the oil business.
Bill Brumbaugh, a Houston energy consultant who advised Sao Tome on its contract with ERHC, says the deal amounts to "a raid on Sao Tome's future national treasury."
The contract has outraged internal opposition groups, which accuse the government of taking bribes. Last month, Sao Tome's president, Fradique Bandeira Melo de Menezes, admitted secretly receiving $100,000 from ERHC's chairman. De Menezes insisted the money was a campaign contribution.
ERHC officials deny bribing the president. They acknowledge winning highly favorable terms and offer no apologies. They say they've spent $12 million so far on the Sao Tome venture, about half in payment to the national treasury and the rest to chart the country's offshore waters and otherwise pave the way for exploration by multinational energy firms.
The original agreement between the company and Sao Tome was signed in 1997. Since then, it has twice been renegotiated, and successive governments have threatened to kill it. Yet the company emerged last month with some of the most generous terms ever bestowed on a foreign oil firm. The beneficiaries include a Nigerian businessman, who owns nearly half the shares, and a handful of Texas oilmen.
"ERHC is in the catbird seat," says Phil Nugent, a Houston-based oil and gas consultant and a major shareholder in the company. "We're going to get our pound of flesh and I think we're due it."
West African Oil Rush
ERHC's dealings with Sao Tome reflect a rush for oil riches in West Africa. The region provides 15% of American oil imports, and the figure is expected to grow to 25% within a decade as the U.S. government seeks to reduce energy reliance on the Middle East.
Major oil producers such as Nigeria and Angola have highly trained energy experts and lawyers and can negotiate on equal terms with big oil companies.
But newcomers with unproven reserves, such as Sao Tome, frequently turn to small European or U.S. consulting firms, which conduct or arrange geological surveys, help write foreign investment laws and try to interest big oil companies in developing reserves. The consulting firms typically collect a flat fee, or make their profit by selling their geological surveys to the big companies.
ERHC, instead, negotiated a stake in Sao Tome's oil fields, including a 14% share of the most promising ones. If the country's reserves weren't as big as believed, or couldn't be exploited, the company would be out its relatively small outlay. On the other hand, if Sao Tome's oil potential was borne out, the company stood to make a vast return.
Andrew Latham, a West Africa expert for Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm in Edinburgh, Scotland, says the Sao Tome-ERHC agreement is far out of line with industry standards.
"There are plenty of examples where a small firm will get in early and help promote a country's oil acreage. Their rewards are relatively minor " Latham said. "I've never seen a company get a stake like ERHC obtained in Sao Tome."
Africa's smallest nation, Sao Tome is composed of two islands with a combined territory of 372 square miles -- about one-third the size of Rhode Island -- and a population of 170,000. The country straddles the equator and is located west of Gabon in the Gulf of Guinea.
Sao Tome gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and, unlike most African nations, is a parliamentary democracy with little history of military involvement in politics. Per capita income is a mere $300, and Sao Tome imports all its fuel as well as most consumer goods and food.
Sao Tome's top export earner is cocoa. Besides issuing commemorative stamps, the country raises revenue by serving as a flag of convenience for the shipping industry and by renting its phone lines to porn operators to route phone-sex calls, a common practice in the Third World since developed countries cracked down on "telesex" businesses a decade ago.
"The country has a national anthem and a flag, but it only exists as an independent state because of foreign financial support," says Gerhard Seibert, author of a history of Sao Tome.
Taiwan, the biggest single donor, agreed to contribute $30 million in 1997 in exchange for Sao Tome's granting diplomatic recognition to the island republic and severing relations with mainland China.
First Contract in 1997
ERHC's interest in Sao Tome's oil grew out of a conversation six years ago between Noreen Wilson, a Washington lobbyist, and an official at Procura Financial Consultants, a South African oil consulting firm.
The company official mentioned that Procura was exploring opportunities in Sao Tome and was looking for an American partner. Wilson's cousin, James Griffin, was on the board of ERHC.
The company, founded in 1986, was involved in waste disposal and cleanup for the oil industry. It had 25 full-time employees, including three petroleum engineers and two geologists. Its contracts included one with Chevron to plug 400 wells in Louisiana.
Wilson said she persuaded the company's chief executive -- then Sam L. Bass Jr., a former wildcatter who had sold oil-drilling equipment to Nigeria and put out oil fires in Kuwait after the Persian Gulf War -- to take a close look at Sao Tome. In early 1997, Wilson, Griffin and several officials from Procura traveled to the islands to speak with government officials.
In short order, they signed a deal. ERHC paid the government $5 million for the right to market the country's oil potential. ERHC, which later bought out Procura's rights, was awarded a minimum of four oil fields and was exempted from all taxes. The agreement also created a state oil company, STPetro. ERHC and the government were to split future profits in STPetro. Wilson was appointed STPetro's president and ERHC's chief financial officer.
"Was the deal a little rich?" asks Wilson. "Yeah, it probably was, but who else was going to take the risk back then? They couldn't give their oil away, let alone get someone to pay them for it."
Wilson said she no longer has an official position with ERHC, but owns millions of shares of company stock.
Brumbaugh, who later advised Sao Tome on how to improve the deal, said ERHC took advantage of the country's inexperience. "The playing field was unequal. So when ERHC asked for the moon, they got it."
The lead negotiator for Sao Tome, Carlos Gomes, wound up with an executive position in the new state oil firm and a $4,000 monthly salary paid by ERHC, according to company officials and corporate records.
ERHC also provided an academic scholarship at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for Gomes' son, according to Wilson and Jim Callender, a former company executive. The children of two other well-connected Sao Tomeans also received scholarships from ERHC, they said.
"It didn't cost much to get on the right side of key government decision-makers," says Gregory Craig, a prominent Washington attorney who briefly served as an advisor to Sao Tome.
Gomes defended the agreement. "At the time, no one had expressed any interest in exploring for oil in Sao Tome," he said in an interview in London this year. "We didn't have any other offers to pick from."
Gomes did not reply to e-mails seeking comment on the benefits he received from ERHC.
Deals Renegotiated
ERHC paid a geographer to chart Sao Tome's waters and lawyers to file demarcation paperwork with the United Nations. ERHC helped settle territorial disputes with neighboring nations, paying the government's legal fees, travel expenses for Sao Tome leaders and other costs. The company also drummed up oil industry interest in the country's reserves.
ERHC was soon in financial trouble. It had largely abandoned its waste disposal and cleanup activities to focus on Sao Tome, which had yet to yield any revenue. Investors were growing skittish because the International Monetary Fund was encouraging Sao Tome to renegotiate the ERHC deal, which the fund said was overly generous to the company.
In 1999, Bass sold his controlling interest in ERHC to Geoffrey Tirman of Talisman Capital, a Little Rock, Ark., investment firm that was a significant investor in ERHC. At the time, Sao Tome was complaining that ERHC was not doing enough to develop its oil industry.
Tirman traveled to Sao Tome in the fall of 1999 to patch things up but talks with the government of President Miguel Trovoada quickly broke down. On his way out of the country, Tirman held a news conference and accused government officials of asking for bribes. The government denied the allegation and charged Tirman with sedition.
After Tirman apologized, the matter was dropped. But Sao Tome announced it would not honor the contract. Tirman filed for arbitration. Then, in 2001, Tirman sold out to Emeka Offor, a Nigerian businessman. By then, ERHC was little more than a shell.
Offor, a friend and occasional business partner of Nugent, the ERHC shareholder, owns a cargo airline, a bank, a newspaper and major telecommunications interests. He appointed himself chairman of ERHC's board but kept the company's headquarters in Houston.
In response to complaints from Sao Tome officials, Offor renegotiated ERHC's deal in May 2001 with the Trovoada administration.
Under the new agreement, ERHC relinquished certain rights, notably its stake in the state oil company. In return, it was granted, among other benefits, a share of Sao Tome's future oil profits and retained its rights to choice oil fields.
Two months later, De Menezes was elected president and, after taking office in September 2001, vowed to revoke the agreement. ERHC threatened legal action but eventually agreed to yet another renegotiation, which began in earnest this year.
By that point, Sao Tome was eager to sign a deal so exploration could commence, said Brumbaugh, the oil consultant. "They saw Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and other countries getting rewards from oil, and they were sucking sand."
The country's lead negotiator was the minister of natural resources, Rafael Branco, whose two children were among those who had received college scholarships from ERHC, according to Wilson and Callender, the former company officials.
Sao Tome's National Petroleum Commission played an advisory role. One of its members was an ERHC shareholder and former company consultant. Two other commission members had been on ERHC's payroll at the state-run oil company. So had two members of another government board overseeing oil exploration in the Joint Development Zone with Nigeria.
Branco did not reply to a request for comment.
The contract, as renegotiated by the Branco-led team, gave ERHC a 14% stake in nine especially promising fields in the Joint Development Zone. It left intact the company's rights in Sao Tome's wholly owned territorial waters, where ERHC has full ownership of two oil fields and a 30% share in two others.
In most of the fields in which it was awarded rights, ERHC was exempted from paying a "signature bonus" -- a one-time fee that oil companies typically pay governments for exploration rights. In West Africa, such bonuses have ranged from a few million dollars per field up to $300 million, the sum ExxonMobil recently paid for rights in Angola.
Chuda Mba, the Nigerian chief executive of ERHC and its lead negotiator, said he had agreed to Sao Tome's chief demand -- that the company relinquish a cut of the government's future oil earnings. In exchange, ERHC asked for and received a larger ownership interest in Sao Tome's oil fields.
"They got what they wanted and we got what we wanted," Mba said by phone from London.
Noreen Wilson was jubilant. "As a shareholder, I'm thrilled," she said. "Everyone was focused on what we gave up and no one added up what we got."
During a public appearance in April, Rafael Branco said the deal marked a "watershed" in Sao Tome's history. "The government and the people of Sao Tome have been keenly waiting for the dawn of this day," he said.
The deal was formally concluded April 10. The next day, an open letter signed by dozens of civic and political leaders accused De Menezes of selling out the national interest.
They charged that the president had received $100,000 from a Bahamian-registered company controlled by Offor in February 2002. The money was allegedly deposited into the account of a Belgian company that De Menezes owns.
At a news conference on April 23 -- the day after the Los Angeles Times sent De Menezes an e-mail asking about the allegation -- the president acknowledged accepting the money. He described it as a contribution to his political party and an allied party for parliamentary elections.
John Coleman, ERHC's sole employee in Houston, said the company had nothing to do with the payment.
Sao Tome and Nigeria have announced that they will take bids in October for exploration rights in nine oil fields they jointly own.
Multinational firms "are going to do back flips to get in," predicted Nugent, the ERHC shareholder.
"The IMF and everybody else dumped all over ERHC about Sao Tome, but they forget that we're the one who brung 'em to the dance," he said. "At the end of the day we're going to have the last laugh."
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ERHC&read=11156
petrostar, You have mail. See your MailBox up top.
cockie01810, I guess I forgot to tell ERHE to send me my paycheck. Also was that you that called today at the ERHE office? LOL
Fishdog, Sorry not my logic, but that is the IHUB moderators rules we have to follow. If you think it is wrong you have to take it up with Matt at IHUB. I just inforce the IHUB rules.
chcr
Fishdog, Please let me explain to you what a moderator can and can not do on a IHUB board. Moderators are not to delete posts that are on topic. Post 53448 is on topic. I may not like the post but it is on topic. If I delete it and it make Matt unhappy with me I could be replaced on this board and you would not want that would you? LOL Please understand there are alot of post I do not care for but that does not mean I can or will delte them all. I pick my battles and that post is not one of them sorry.
chcr
ftc88, I agree but it is hard to read over 500+ posts per day and work to. I promise all the moderators do try and we are not perfect. We will continue to due our best and if you should see a problem you can always just let me know and I will try to do my best to fix it.
chcr
O/T, iwondertoo, I agree that is why IHUB has a delete button for the moderators and Matt. lol That is also why having a subscription to IHUB is helpful. Not perfect or always fair just helpful.
chcr
O/T some times life is unfair! Have a great day. lol
O/T What I find odd is several post ago was Meridians last post per Meridian? see below:
Posted by: Meridian
In reply to: None Date:5/13/2006 5:45:37 PM
Post #of 79213
TheDane I hope you have my email address. If anything just let me know. Don't know if I return to the board. Take care.
Posted by: Meridian
In reply to: None Date:5/17/2006 12:44:48 PM
Post #of 79213
I am not planning on returning, but should I return, I won't return as meridian. So once the account is deleted, anyone pretending to be Meridian is just that, a pretender.
Bye all.
O/T, Meridian is confused and mistaken. FYI, Only Matt can ban a poster and Meridian has not been ban from the ERHE board.
chcr
O/T FYI, Meridian was not ban from the ERHE board!
chcr
ERHC ENERGY INC (OTC BB:ERHEE.OB) Delayed quote data
Last Trade: 0.625
Trade Time: 9:30AM ET
Change: 0.005 (0.81%)
Prev Close: 0.62
Open: 0.62
Bid: 0.615 x 2500
Ask: 0.625 x 2500
1y Target Est: N/A
Day's Range: 0.56 - 0.625
52wk Range: N/A
Volume: 90,700
Avg Vol (3m): N/A
Market Cap: 444.32M
P/E (ttm): N/A
EPS (ttm): N/A
Div & Yield: N/A (N/A)
1d 5d
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ERHEE.OB
Oil from Africa comes with political instability
Posted 4/30/2006 9:54 PM ET
By Rob Crilly, Special for USA TODAY
NAIROBI, Kenya — A new Bank of America report shows Africa provided more oil to the U.S. market in 2005 than the Middle East.
The Bank of America report warns that Africa suffers from political instability that also has raised U.S. concerns about the reliability of supplies from the Middle East. The report says the growing reliance on African producers is not making the U.S. supply network more secure.
"Unbeknownst to many U.S. investors, America has become increasingly exposed to an unexpected or sudden drop in African oil production due to its greater reliance on African oil," Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America, writes in the April 20 report.
Quinlan notes that Iran's nuclear ambitions were not the only factor behind April's record oil prices, which closed Friday at $71.88 a barrel. The price increases also can be blamed on unrest in Nigeria's oil-producing Delta region. Bank of America's report put Nigeria at No. 5 — after Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela — on the list of top oil suppliers to the USA.
Imports of African oil reached 921 million barrels, or 18.7% of the U.S. total, in 2005, according to the Bank of America report. That surpassed imports from the Middle East, which were 839 million barrels, or 17%.
Imports from Africa have increased by 51% since 2000 at the same time supplies from the Middle East fell from more than 900 million barrels to 839 million, or from 22% to 17% of total U.S. imports.
That trend is likely to continue, Quinlan said by telephone from his New York office. "We talked to oil companies. We talked to drillers. And Africa is now front-and-center on the radar screen," he said.
Three of the top 10 suppliers to the USA in 2005 were in Africa: Nigeria, Algeria and Angola.
The shift to Africa comes as the Bush administration moves to reduce U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 31, President Bush promised to develop alternative forms of energy and to replace more than 75% of oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.
However, most, if not all, of Africa's oil-producing nations have been beset at different times by insecurity, corruption or all-out civil war, says John Prendergast, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group in Washington, an organization that works to prevent conflict around the world.
"There are some pretty big question marks in the west and in the east, over Nigeria and Sudan, that lead me to be cautious about being bullish over Africa's rapid growth in oil production," Prendergast says.
Rebels waging a war of sabotage and abduction in the Niger Delta have cut production in Nigeria by almost 25% this year — a drop of about 450,000 barrels a day — as they campaign for a bigger chunk of oil profits to be shared with the local population.
Continuing strife in Sudan's western region of Darfur means large-scale investment there is a gamble.
Adding to the supply uncertainties, the USA faces new competition for oil from an energy-hungry rival: China.
On the first day of a two-day visit to Nigeria, Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday signed energy, telecommunications and other deals with Nigeria.
In January, China's state-run CNOOC oil firm announced it would pay $2.3 billion for a 45% stake in a Nigerian offshore oil field. In addition, China gets about 6% of its oil from Sudan.
Paul Sankey, research analyst at Deutsche Bank in New York, says the world has run out of "easy oil." Future production will have to focus on remaining reserves whether of poor quality, at the bottom of deep oceans, or in areas of instability in Africa or elsewhere.
"U.S. foreign policy, is strictly oriented to maintaining the flow of oil in a free-market manner," he says. "They will look anywhere where they can get oil."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-04-30-africa-oil-usat_x.htm?POE=click-refer
Matt, over see's all IHUB boards and there are over 4000
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No, balance_builder is saying we have NO IDEA why.
O/T, I know...lol
Touche' redinvest. eom
O/T Your welcome.emo
O/T We should all be careful alwright, the JDZ board is a safe harbor for Joe Shea/procon/blog boy/jouster.
To the ERHE board, I am the most guilty of every one today on this board of putting O/T Blog Boy all over our ERHE board. Now that there is a new board just for Blog Boy (that I know he will read all day and every day) we need to take the Blog Boy comments to the new board.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=5605
I am sorry board for the O/T spam today please except my apology.
JackCB,
you are so right. Now I see the new IHUB board has been updated to reflect your idea.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=5605
There is now a place to talk about Joe Shea free of being deleted.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=5605
Sao Tome Prepares for an Oil Boom
The results of drilling in waters next to the West African island are expected soon.
By Dino Mahtani, Financial Times
April 15, 2006
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE — On the tarmac of a sleepy airport on a tiny tropical West African island, a private jet unloads boxes of champagne, an early sign that preparations are underway for an oil boom.
The impoverished and aid-dependent archipelago state of Sao Tome and Principe may be home to only 160,000 people — whose main exports include tourism, cocoa and phone-sex lines — but it also sits on one of the world's oil exploration hotspots.
With President Bush keen to diversify U.S. energy sources away from the Middle East, Sao Tome could become a big factor in U.S. energy policy in the Gulf of Guinea, which already accounts for about 15% of U.S. imports.
Chevron Corp., the oil giant based in San Ramon, Calif., is expected to soon announce the results of the first oil well drilled in a deep-water development zone bringing Sao Tome together with neighboring Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer.
Chevron said Tuesday that it had completed drilling the well — begun in January in partnership with Exxon Mobil Corp. — and was studying samples extracted. The company declined to comment on reports that it had made a significant discovery at the site.
Once a disputed territory, the zone was born from a negotiated settlement in 2001. Profits are split, with 60% going to Nigeria and 40% to Sao Tome.
With three more contracts signed in March to develop additional acreage in the zone, Sao Tome's politicians will be eyeing the $49-million initial payment by Chevron and its consortium last year and the tens of millions more expected from the new contracts. Sao Tome's gross national product was an estimated $70.5 million last year.
Although some members of the Sao Tomean political elite are priming themselves for a champagne uncorking frenzy, all is not well. Considerable damage has been done to the oil development zone's credibility because of infighting between lobbies representing different political and business interests on the island, in Nigeria and elsewhere.
Those involved in the two oil-zone licensing rounds in 2003 and 2004 say the haggling could have delayed oil production by several years.
Late last year, Sao Tome's attorney general released an unsolicited report saying the latest licensing round was "subject to serious procedural deficiencies and political manipulation." The report also alleged that Sao Tome had been pressured by Nigeria to sign off on licensing awards favoring certain business interests. This prompted a fierce denial by Nigeria.
Over the last few months, three U.S. companies that won licenses under the 2004 round to operate oil blocks in the oil zone withdrew from the process after delays over signing contracts. They were replaced by China's Sinopec Group and Addax Petroleum Corp., a Canadian-listed company with strong ties to Nigeria. The new operators have less experience in offshore drilling than the U.S. companies.
Complicating the relationship between Nigeria and Sao Tome is the role of Environmental Remediation Holding Corp., a small and inexperienced Houston-based oil company.
In exchange for $5 million in 1997, Environmental Remediation was awarded unusually favorable terms, by industry standards, in Sao Tome. Its rights were renegotiated by successive Sao Tomean governments, but the company still took shares in five of six oil blocks awarded so far in the oil zone and won exemptions on paying initial signature fees to Sao Tome.
Emeka Offor, a Nigerian businessman close to Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian president, acquired control of Environmental Remediation when Sao Tome was in arbitration with the company, just before Sao Tome and Nigeria resolved their territorial dispute to create the oil zone.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil company, also acquired favorable rights in Sao Tome in the late 1990s but did not take them in blocks where Environmental Remediation would be present. Pro-Exxon lobbies have subsequently tried to discredit the process.
Political infighting between lobbies representing oil companies may provide the biggest threat to the oil-development zone.
"The disruptive influence is the inherited problem Sao Tome has with third parties," said Hassan Tukur, a senior Nigerian foreign ministry official and a former director of the oil zone.
Even seasoned politicians admit the political system is breaking down, partly through the effect of inflows of money into different campaigns reflecting divided loyalties on the island. Sao Tome has seen six prime ministers and an unsuccessful coup since President Fradique de Menezes took office in 2001.
A law designed to limit government spending from oil receipts could be the only brake on the political system being completely dominated by cash, which would hobble the ability of any government to function equitably.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-saotome15apr15,1,370245.story
THIS IS A ERHE BOARD! STAY ON TOPIC TO AVOID DELETIONS!
wzebra33, per you request see new ERHE chart link above.