Be careful when signing deals with multinationals: oil, gas countries warned

Traders warned about internet deals with 'ghost' firms
Daily News
BUSINESS people in the country who wish to do business with Americans have been advised to avoid negotiating their deals through the internet, as some of the companies they deal with do not even exist. Speaking to journalists in Dar es Salaam on ...

>Any hope that Tanzanian investors will receive special treatment in natural gas exploration was dashed again yesterday when President Jakaya Kikwete weighed in, again, in the debate on the place of locals in natural gas exploration. Far from appeasing local entrepreneurs, Mr Kikwete reiterated the government’s stand that there would be no preferential treatment for them.

>The Union Government yesterday launched a team of negotiators in all natural gas and oil contracts with international oil companies (IOCs) so as to tap the best deals for the socioeconomic benefit of Tanzania and its people.

The world is at a loss. Its newest nation is five months into a brutal and intractable conflict that has triggered a humanitarian crisis that the UN has warned could be more serious than anything Africa has seen since the Ethiopian famine three decades ago.

While officials in Brussels were calling for Europe to reduce its dependency on Russian natural gas and negotiate with Moscow as a bloc, Austria was quietly bypassing the European Commission to cut its own bilateral deal on building a pipeline.

>Senior officials at the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) risk being jailed if they fail to submit 26 production sharing agreements (PSA) contracts, the state-owned entity, signed with multinational and local investors, it has been revealed.

A report on oil and gas in East Africa released by Deloitte on Monday suggests that Tanzania risks losing on the lucrative oil and gas sector.

Since 2011 the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), specifically the Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) of Norway and the Angolan University of Agostinho Netto are collaborating under the ANTHEI project to train professionals for petroleum engineering and geosciences at Masters level. Already three batches of a total of 28 Tanzanian students have been enrolled under the program. In this program the students spend...