I was recently minding my own business when I found myself thrust into the middle of an interesting conversation that revealed some disturbing facts about the current administrations self-awareness of its capacity to thrive in the guiles and wiles of international business and finance. Apparently, when the government decided to teach Kosmos a lesson and prevent the sale of their stake in the Jubilee field to ExxonMobil, they had devised a scheme whereby Statoil ASA of Norway would partner the GNPC to take over the operatorship of the field upon the exit of Kosmos. Unbeknownst to them, Exxon had deployed such a serious arsenal in Oslo that the earnest Ghanaian brokers merely looked like a pack of bumbling kids in their high-stakes, international, high-wire balancing act. As the former Statoil insider put it with a ghost of a wry smile around his lips: Your folks never stood a chance. Their schemes were doomed from the start as they were operating virtually blind. When it came to it, we were only interested in figuring out if another Jubilee-scale opportunity could come onstream anytime soon. Our intelligence suggested the chances were extremely remote. There is nothing like Jubilee on the horizon. Once we squeezed that morsel of intelligence out of the trove, we assured Exxon not to sweat it too hard. I couldnt help going agape.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:28:23 +0000
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