Tim Cocks News

With more ships heading around the Cape of Good Hope due to attacks in the Red Sea region and a shutdown in their main South African bunkering operations, Mercuria and Trafigura have started refuelling services in Mauritius, four sources said.The two trading houses have opened operations in Port Louis to compensate for the shutdown at South Africa's Algoa Bay which stems from a tax dispute with authorities, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.Algoa Bay is South Africa's…

A South African court ruled on Tuesday that a Kuwaiti firm could ship thousands of sheep to the Middle East, dealing a blow to animal welfare activists seeking to ban such exports on concerns that extreme heat could kill the animals en route.In the high court case, South Africa’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) sought an interim injunction to prevent Kuwaiti livestock exporter Al Mawashi from sailing a vessel loaded with sheep out of South Africa’s East London port.In papers filed with the court, the NSPCA said cramped spaces and extreme heat had led to some animals being “cooked alive” on similar voyages across the Equator during the summer months.The court ruled that Al Mawashi could transport up to 56…

Pirates stormed a container ship off the coast of Guinea on Wednesday, making off with money and some of its cargo but leaving the crew unharmed, the government said. They fired guns and briefly held the crew hostage while they were looting the ship named Wendok, Guinea government spokesman Albert Camara said by telephone. He did not have details of the flag Wendok was flying under, the company running it, what its cargo was nor the nationalities of the crew. He said that Guinea's navy had been alerted but that the pirates had escaped before it could catch them.

Ghana began pumping crude from a second offshore field operated by British company Tullow Oil on Thursday, hoping the additional revenue will boost its flagging economy. The Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) field expects to average around 23,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2016, eventually reaching 80,000 bpd along with associated gas to be harnessed to ease a domestic power deficit. President John Dramani Mahama opened the valves on the $1 billion Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel, the Prof John Evans Atta Mills, named after Ghana's former president who died in 2012.

Ruling party reforms improved Apapa port; shippers still face delays and corruption. The road leading to the Lagos port, which handles nearly everything that Africa's biggest economy imports, is one of the most congested in a megacity whose traffic jams are legendary. Wide enough to accommodate only two lanes on either side, along it move the goods that Africa's top crude producer uses its huge oil receipts to buy -- everything from designer wear to dried fish, champagne and shampoo. The Apapa port is also one of the biggest bottlenecks in an economy throttled by power cuts and institutional dysfunction. Reforms to this behemoth by President Goodluck Jonathan and previous administrations of his People's Democratic Party (PDP) brought huge improvements over the past decade…

Pirates have launched a spate of attacks in the creeks of Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta region since last Thursday, killing three policemen and abducting at least nine people, security officials said. Most of those kidnapped were local workers in Africa's biggest oil industry, where piracy in the surrounding waterways and seas is on the rise again after a brief lull, bucking a global trend that has seen pirate attacks fall elsewhere. In the most recent attack, gunmen on a boat opened fire on police escorting a barge operated by Italian oil company ENI along the Santa Barbara River, killing three policeman. "Sea pirates attacked and killed three of our men. They were escorting an Agip (ENI) barge when they were attacked.

Nigerian oil workers' unions have called off a four-day strike after reaching a deal with the government in a dispute over pensions, they said on Saturday. A joint statement from the two main unions also said they had agreed to resolve directly with the state oil firm an outstanding issue over problems concerning refineries. Oil companies and the government had said the strikes, which began on Tuesday, did not affect exports, despite threats from the unions that they would shut down terminals. (Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Nigeria's oil minister announced a 213 billion naira (1.3 billion US dollar) bail-out package for power companies on Saturday, nearly a year after the sector was privatised. Despite holding the world's ninth largest gas reserves, Nigeria only produces a tenth of the amount of electricity as South Africa for a population three times the size, and in an effort to end decades of debilitating power shortages President Goodluck Jonathan handed ownership of the moribund state electricity company to private buyers last November. But some companies have already run into financial difficulties linked to debts left by the state power company and regulated prices that remain too low to be profitable.

A strike by Nigeria's oil unions is not having any immediate impact on crude oil exports from Africa's top exporter, despite moving into a third day, spokesmen for leading operator Shell and Nigeria LNG said. Nigerian oil unions say the strike could affect exports if no agreement is reached with the government. The spokesman for NLNG, the gas exporter which is run jointly by Shell and the government, said he did not foresee any impact from the strike, which began on Tuesday. The dispute is over pensions and a lack of crude supplied to refineries. Also indicating that the strike has yet to have any impact, the Qua Iboe <BFO-QUA> grade of crude oil for November export came to market on Thursday, on schedule.

Exporters have resumed loading of cocoa shipments in Nigeria's second-largest producing area, Cross Rivers state, after the state government suspended on Friday a levy on bean exports, a trade body said. Cocoa shipments from Cross Rivers, which produces annual volumes of around 60,000 tonnes in the world's fourth-biggest producer, had been halted for over a week as exporters protested the state's failure to adhere to a court ruling last week to repeal the tax. About 500 tonnes of cocoa due for export were stuck in warehouses while shipments were suspended. The Cross Rivers state government in 2011 introduced a levy on cocoa exporters who ship the beans through Nigerian seaports other than the state's Calabar port. Exporters went to court to stop the levy.