Sao Tome sacks oil adviser before licence award By Felix Onuah
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.
05/07/05 19:16 ET
