SENEGAL TRANSPARENCY: CISSÉ SEEKS ADVISORS TO BLOW UP OIL CONTRACT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

摘要

Senegal, which is struggling to project a clean image to overseas investors in light of the arbitration cases before the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), is keen to restore its reputation and promote the transparency of its contract award process. The country is currently locked in a dispute with British firm African Petroleum (APCL), which has accused Dakar of unfairly removing its rights to two blocks in favour of Total ( AEI 833). Minister of petroleum Mouhamadou Makhtar Cissé is looking for a consultancy firm to help the ministry improve the way it follows-up on and manages oil permits and update the country’s registry. The Senegalese ministry of petroleum’s management and execution unit GESPetrogaz published a call for five consultants last month. The World Bank’s International Development Association will be financing the new recruits. The team, comprising a project manager, three oil and gas registry experts and one database specialist, will be tasked with creating a tool able to make it easier to register oil permit requests. The firm has also been hired to offer a longterm solution for georeferencing the blocks. Several large oil (Sangomar and FAN) and gas (Tortue and Yakaar) discoveries have been made off the Senegalese coast in recent years, and foreign oil firms have been flocking to the area.