Gazprom plans Africa gas grab

The Russians are challenging Western oil companies by holding talks with African countries for energy partnerships. To the chagrin of the European Union, the Europeans are opposing any Russian state-owned dominance that could choke Europe's thirst for energy.

Financial Times

By Matthew Green in Abuja and Catherine Belton in Moscow


Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy group, is seeking to win access to vast energy reserves in Nigeria in a move that will heighten concerns among western governments over its increasingly powerful grip on gas supplies to Europe.

A senior Nigerian oil industry official, who declined to be named, said the company was offering to invest in energy infrastructure in return for the chance to develop some of the biggest gas deposits in the world.

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Emerging markets help Nokia sales

Quarterly sales at Nokia have hit their highest level for five years helped by strong business in emerging markets.

Global sales between April and June rose by 28% on the same period a year ago to 12.6bn euros ($17.2bn; £8.5bn)

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone company, increased its share of the mobile handset market to 38%, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

It expected Nokia's momentum in countries such as India to give it a 40% market share by the end of 2007.

Oil price rises to all-time high

(photo: Kimberly White/Getty Images)

The price of a barrel of US light, sweet crude surpassed the previous high of $78.40 a barrel, seen in July 2006, before falling back to $76.53. Prices have risen steadily in the past few weeks following disruption to output in Nigeria and the North Sea. Wednesday's initial rise followed data showing a fall in US crude stockpiles.

African Tigers Re-Born

Some scientists believe that there were tigers in Africa a million years ago, but some species died out. The more recent hopes that the continent would generate tiger economies have been equally blighted.

Think of Ghana. When the former Gold Coast gained independence in 1957, its prospects were bright. The new country was rich in cocoa and gold and its population was relatively well-educated. But a long series of coups and persistent corruption dashed those hopes. Ghana is still resource-rich, but it relies on foreign aid for 11% of gross domestic product, and 60% of the population still toils away in subsistence agriculture.

An oil discovery and some changed thinking may be giving Ghana another chance. As John Kufuor, Ghana's president, put it, 'We're going to really zoom, accelerate.'

Oil alone certainly won't work miracles, despite a local newspaper's enthusiastic headline: 'Thank God, Oil at Last, Thank God.' In Nigeria, Angola and Venezuela, huge oil wealth has been disastrous, thwarting the nonoil economy and fertilizing corruption. Fortunately for Ghana, the country's oil revenues are expected to be more moderate -- a little less than the current flow of foreign aid.

A few brave global investors claim that some African countries, including Ghana, are finally learning the lessons of African failure and Asian tiger success. What makes economies successful isn't gifts from foreigners or royalties from oil producers, but bourgeois virtues: education, infrastructure, honest government, middle-class savings, a widespread work ethic, small families and so forth.

The newfound optimism may be a triumph of hope over experience, or a misreading of the effects of the current boom in resource prices. But it does look like a smaller portion of the windfall revenue is being wasted than in the past. That goes along with growing middle classes and more economically responsible governments.

Right now, the only tigers in Africa are a few specimens imported from China. But Mr. Kufuor may be right in his hopes for an indigenous species: 'You come back in five years, and you'll see that Ghana truly is the African tiger.'

Source: StreetInsider