General News
Savannah Energy Announces Completion of ExxonMobil Transaction in Chad, Cameroon
Savannah Energy PLC, the British independent energy company focused around the delivery of Projects that Matter in Africa, is pleased to announce the completion of its acquisition of ExxonMobil’s entire upstream and midstream asset portfolio in Chad and Cameroon, including operatorship of the upstream assets (through the acquisition of the former operator, Esso Exploration and Production Chad, Inc.) (the “ExxonMobil Transaction”).
Savannah is also pleased to announce the publication of a Supplemental Admission Document (the “Document”) in relation to the ExxonMobil Transaction.
This announcement follows Savannah’s 13 December 2021 announcement of the signing of a Share Purchase Agreement (“SPA”) with ExxonMobil, which has an economic effective date of 1 January 2021, and the publication of its 31 December 2021 Admission Document containing details on, inter alia, the ExxonMobil Transaction.
The ExxonMobil Transaction constituted a reverse takeover transaction pursuant to AIM Rule 14 and, accordingly, was subject to, inter alia, shareholder approval which was granted on 24 January 2022. The ExxonMobil Transaction has now been completed.
Re-admission of the share capital of the group as enlarged by the ExxonMobil Transaction is scheduled to take place at 8.00 a.m. on 13 December 2022.
Transaction Highlights
Following the completion of the ExxonMobil Transaction, Savannah now owns a 40% interest in the Doba Oil Project and an effective c. 40% indirect interest in the Chad-Cameroon export transportation system:
The Doba Oil Project comprises interests in seven producing fields – Kome, Miandoum, Bolobo, Moundouli, Maikeri, Nya and Timbre – with a combined gross 2P Reserve base of 142.3 MMbbls as at 1 October 2022 and expected 2022 gross production of 28.0 Kbopd; and
The Chad-Cameroon export transportation system comprises a 1,081 km pipeline and the Kome Kribi 1 floating storage and offloading facility, offshore Cameroon (along with all associated facilities).
The Chad/Cameroon pipeline is 30” in diameter with a nameplate capacity of 250 Kbopd and an estimated pipeline throughput in 2022 of 124 Kbopd, from more than 15 fields;
The Company’s proposed acquisition of PETRONAS (E&P) Overseas Ventures SDN. BHD.’s interests in the same assets in Chad and Cameroon is not a condition of the ExxonMobil Transaction.
Andrew Knott, CEO of Savannah Energy, said: “We are delighted to announce the completion of our US$407 million acquisition of ExxonMobil’s upstream and midstream businesses in Chad and Cameroon.
I would like to warmly welcome our new employees to the Savannah family and look forward to building our in-country businesses with them as we embrace the multiple growth opportunities available to us.
In Chad, our focus will immediately turn towards making the investments we believe the Doba Oil Project needs to significantly increase production volumes from current levels and the advancement of our up to US$500m/500 MW of renewable power projects.
We expect our investments in these projects to provide significant increased tax revenues and electricity access for the people of Chad. In Cameroon, we hope to see the COTCo and TOTCo businesses grow further over the course of the coming years through additional third-party customer throughput volumes. We are also actively considering investments in other opportunities to pursue Projects that Matter in country.
Outside of Chad and Cameroon, we expect that, in the coming months, we will further augment our corporate growth profile through the announcement of additional hydrocarbon asset acquisitions and the initiation of new utility-scale renewable energy projects (in addition to our existing up to 750MW project pipeline).
Lastly, I would like to the opportunity to express my gratitude to all those who contributed to the successful completion of this transaction and, in particular, our host country stakeholders, my incredibly dedicated and passionate colleagues and the ExxonMobil deal and in-country teams. Thank you all.”
Re-Admission and Total Voting Rights
The Company’s issued share capital currently comprises 1,306,098,819 ordinary shares. Application has been made to the London Stock Exchange plc for re-admission of the Company’s 1,306,098,819 ordinary shares to trading on AIM, which is expected to take place at 8.00 a.m. on 13 December 2022.
As the Company does not hold any shares in treasury, this figure of 1,306,098,819 Ordinary Shares may continue to be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA’s Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.
Board Appointments
Further to the Company’s announcement of 7 June 2022, the Company is pleased to announce that the proposed appointments of Sarah Clark and Dr Djamila Ferdjani as Non-Executive Directors of the Board will become effective on completion of the ExxonMobil Transaction. The appointment of Sylvie Rucar has been delayed due to personal reasons and is now anticipated to become effective during early 2023.
Sarah Clark
Sarah was an elite level athlete for 18 years and is a former British, European and Commonwealth champion in the sport of judo, who competed at three Olympic Games for Great Britain. She is currently CEO of Edinburgh, Judo one of the UK’s largest, most successful and fastest growing judo clubs catering for beginners to Olympic medallists. Sarah currently serves as a Non-Executive Director of JudoScotland (the governing body for judo in Scotland).
Sarah has worked extensively in mentor, role model and leadership positions with organisations such as the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, the Youth Sport Trust and the Winning Scotland Foundation. In these roles, her focus has been to deliver personal and group development programmes to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities. She has also worked extensively with individuals and companies delivering programmes around the positive learnings businesses can take from the elite level sport world.
Dr Djamila Ferdjani
Dr Ferdjani is a medical doctor, entrepreneur and social activist. She founded the Pro-Santé Polyclinic in Niger, of which she was President and CEO. Djamila formerly served as a technical consultant to the Islamic Development Bank and as a Professor of Health Prevention and Promotion at the African Development University.
She is a founding Board member of Afrikajom (the leading Pan African human rights focused think tank) and is the founder and President of MedCom NGO (a Niger focused medical and educational NGO). She is a former a member of the executive committee of the Orange Niger Foundation.
She regularly speaks at African focused Human Rights events, including those organised by the World Bank, Oxfam, Plan International, the G5 Sahel, The Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the National Democratic Institute and TEDx. Dr Ferdjani has been named by the United Nations Population Fund as one of the 100 women leaders in Niger and by Facebook as one of 19 African LeadHERs breaking boundaries in the fields of media, entertainment, education and business.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has busted a Ponzi Scheme Academy and arrested 133 suspects in Abuja.
They were arrested at the Compensation Layout in Gwagwalada area of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, following actionable intelligence on the existence of the Academy.
The Academy, named Q University (a.k.a Q-Net) is in the business of recruiting gullible young Nigerians who are trained to recruit more gullible citizens into the scheme with the promise of getting unrealistic profit returns.
The suspects are enrolled into a training codenamed: “Special Training for New Generation Billionaire” and brainwashed to believe that they would graduate into the league of billionaires.
They got into the training by obtaining a form the promoters called “Independent Representative Application Form” with promotional slogans such as: “I’m a Champion” “I’m Unstoppable”, “I’m Infinity”, among others.
The EFCC carried out the operation in collaboration with officers and men of 176 Guards Battalion, Nigerian Army.
Items recovered from the suspects include phones, computers and other electronic gadgets.
They will be charged to court as soon as investigations are concluded.
Big companies are leaving Nigeria are leaving Nigeria because of what Heineken Lokpobiri, minister of state for petroleum resources described as “middlemanism”.
So called “middlemanism” is slack form of middleman, which is an intermediary who facilitates transactions between a buyer and a seller, often taking on roles like wholesaling, distribution, or brokering, and earning a commission or fee for their services.
The minister made this known during the opening of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria’s Sub-Saharan Africa International Petroleum Conference.
Heineken Lokpobiri disclosed that a lot of intermediaries who entered the oil industry caused its damage.
According to the minister, due to middlemen and intermediaries, some big and multinational oil service giant such as Schlumberger, Halliburton, McDermott, and others left Nigeria.
“We have made mistakes. And I’m saying this specifically so that all African countries here today will not make the mistake that Nigeria made. When I became minister, one of the issues I was confronted with had to do with the multinational service companies all exiting Nigeria. They’ve all gone, except, maybe this Italian company, Saipem. That was the only one that was around. So we had a situation where there was a monopoly.
“The other big boys—the Schlumberger, Halliburton, the McDermotts—all of them have gone. All of you here in PETAN have your good days in these companies. That was where you started from. That was where you actually developed your capacity,” Lokpobiri said.
Authorities in seven African countries have arrested 306 suspects and seized 1842 devices in a sweeping international operation targeting cyber-enabled fraud and scams.
Dubbed Operation Red Card, the effort ran from November 2024 to February 2025, focusing on dismantling cybercrime networks that defrauded over 5000 victims through mobile banking fraud, investment scams and malicious messaging app schemes., according to infosecurity-magazine.com
In Nigeria, police arrested 130 suspects, including 113 foreign nationals, for running fraudulent investment schemes and online casinos.
Authorities found that criminals funneled illicit proceeds into digital assets to obscure their financial trails.
Investigations also uncovered signs of human trafficking, with some individuals coerced into participating in the scams.
Law enforcement seized: 26 vehicles; 16 houses; 39 plots of land; and 685 electronic devices
In Rwanda, 45 individuals were arrested for orchestrating a social engineering scam that defrauded victims of more than $305,000 in 2024.
Scammers posed as telecommunications employees and falsely claimed victims had won lotteries to extract sensitive information.
Others impersonated injured family members to request emergency financial assistance.
Authorities recovered $103,043 and seized 292 devices.
South African authorities arrested 40 individuals and confiscated over 1000 SIM cards, along with 53 desktop computers and towers linked to a sophisticated SIM box fraud scheme.
This setup allowed cybercriminals to disguise international calls as local ones, facilitating large-scale SMS phishing attacks.
In Zambia, law enforcement apprehended 14 members of a cyber syndicate specializing in malware attacks.
The criminals sent phishing messages containing malicious links, infecting victims’ devices and taking control of messaging and banking apps. This enabled them to access financial accounts and further spread fraudulent links.
The operation was carried out through INTERPOL’s African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC) initiative, which supports law enforcement efforts in combating cyber-threats.
The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office funded Operation Red Card under the AFJOC initiative, allocating £2.6m to enhance Africa’s law enforcement capabilities in detecting and preventing cybercrime.
The seven participating countries – Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, To and Zambia – continue to collaborate on intelligence-led cybercrime investigations.
“The success of Operation Red Card demonstrates the power of international cooperation in combating cybercrime, which knows no borders and can have devastating effects on individuals and communities,” commented Neal Jetton, Interpol’s director of the cybercrime directorate.
“The recovery of significant assets and devices, as well as the arrest of key suspects, sends a strong message to cyber-criminals that their activities will not go unpunished.”
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