BLACK GOLD BULLETIN

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is about to become a publicly traded company, and it isn't doing so quietly. The offer opened its subscription window on 14 September 2026 and closes on 13 October 2026, positioning it as the largest share sale in African history.  AI generated Theme Image An Initial Public Offering is the process by which a private company sells shares to the public for the first time, listing on a stock exchange so that anyone can buy in. In exchange for giving up part of its ownership, the company raises fresh capital that it typically uses to fund growth, pay down debt, or reward early investors. Once listed, the share price moves daily, rising and falling on how the market judges the company's performance and prospects. Dangote Refinery is offering 4.1 billion new shares at a fixed price of ₦525 each, with a minimum application of 10 shares costing ₦5,250. The listing will happen on the Nigerian Exchange Group, though financial advisers hav...

Ghana is making another major push to revive its upstream petroleum sector, and this time, two global energy giants are at the centre of the story. Source: Aldrenor The Government of Ghana, GNPC, GNPC Explorco, Shell Overseas Holdings Limited and Chevron Sub-Saharan Africa Ventures Limited have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the South Deepwater Tano (SDWT) Block offshore Ghana. The agreement provides a framework for the parties to negotiate exploration and production rights for the block. Importantly, the MoU is non-binding and does not yet constitute a final petroleum agreement. Why South Deepwater Tano matters Located offshore Ghana, the SDWT block covers approximately 3,482 square kilometres and lies in deep-to-ultra-deep waters. The block is believed to hold more than 3 billion barrels of hydrocarbon potential. However, this figure represents estimated potential—not proven commercially recoverable reserves. There is also an existing discovery to appraise. Previous o...

OPEC and its partners added more than a million barrels a day to the market in July, just as the OPEC Basket posted its steepest monthly drop of the year. AI Genrated Theme Image The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partner producers within the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) raised crude output by 1.42 million barrels per day in July, bringing combined production to 37.66 million barrels per day, according to the latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report released on August 12, 2026. OPEC's own members accounted for the bulk of the increase, lifting output by 1.66 million barrels per day to 23.63 million barrels per day, with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait leading the return of barrels previously held off the market under the group's voluntary restraint arrangement. Saudi Arabia's production rose by 590,000 barrels per day, Iraq's by 665,000 barrels per day and Kuwait's by 393,000 barrels per day, figures that mark one of the more rapid u...

Everyone knows oil runs the world. Fewer people know that the industry extracting it depends on something even more consumed, more contested, and far less regulated. Ask most people which natural resource the world extracts the most of, and they will say oil. The correct answer is sand.  AI Generated Theme Image According to UNEP's third Sand and Sustainability report, released in May 2026 and compiled by 27 international experts, global sand extraction has now reached approximately 50 billion tonnes per year, five times what the world mined in 1970, making it the most extracted solid material on Earth after water. The global sand market was valued at $569.4 billion in 2024, and yet, unlike oil, it operates under almost no international regulatory framework governing how it is extracted, traded, or protected. For the oil and gas industry, this is not an abstract environmental concern. It is a supply chain issue. Sand and the Oil Well Hydraulic fracturing, the dominant method by whi...

For decades, the North Sea has been one of Europe's greatest energy success stories. From the first commercial discoveries in the late 1960s to the oil boom of the 1970s and 1980s, the basin transformed the United Kingdom into a major hydrocarbon producer, generated hundreds of billions of pounds in tax revenues, and supported entire communities across Scotland and northeast England. Today, however, the North Sea finds itself at the center of a global debate that extends far beyond oil and gas. It is now a battleground between energy security and climate ambition, economic pragmatism and environmental responsibility, and increasingly, between three influential political figures: former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, newly appointed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and United States President Donald Trump. AI Generated Theme Image The Rise of the North Sea At its peak, the UK Continental Shelf produced more than 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. While production has declined...

The continent is not just losing oil revenue. It is losing the minds needed to reverse the decline, and the institutions meant to stop that from happening are running on empty. AI Generated Theme Image When the Strait of Hormuz closed in February 2026, and crude prices spiked sixty per cent within weeks, the conversation everywhere turned to tankers, sanctions, and supply routes. Very few people asked the more uncomfortable question: When the next shock hits, will Africa have enough of its own engineers to respond to it independently? The honest answer, right now, is no. That is not a political statement. It is an institutional one, and it starts with money. KAUST in Saudi Arabia was built with a $10 billion founding endowment drawn directly from state oil revenues, a figure that has since grown to $20 billion. Texas A&M, the academic engine of the Permian Basin, recently became the first university in Texas to cross $1 billion in annual research expenditure. The University of Mine...