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Angola announced Thursday that it's leaving the OPEC oil producers cartel, coming after it battled with the group over lower production quotas this year. Diamantino de Azevedo, the African nation's oil minister, said Angola “does not gain anything by remaining in the organization,” according to state news agency Angop. The country joined OPEC in 2007. Disagreements over lower oil quotas for some African countries, including Angola, led to an usual dayslong delay to OPEC's November meeting, where the group, along with allied producers led by Russia, decide how much oil to send to the world. At the meeting, Angola's production...

It is déjà vu for major oil producers, who are again considering steeper production cuts. It took only a month after the Hamas attacks on Israel unleashed a punishing war for oil prices to fall below their pre-Oct. 7 level. The steep drop in oil prices last week, with Brent crude briefly dropping to $77 per barrel, led to speculation that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers (OPEC+) will decide to cut production at its next meeting. OPEC’s last-minute decision to delay the meeting, now scheduled for Nov. 30, will only add to the speculation. U.S....

President Joe Biden on Wednesday bragged about his administration’s plans to build a solar farm in Africa that U.S. taxpayers are funding a $900 million loan for. Biden’s boast occurred during a speech hosted by the League of Conservation Voters, in which he promoted his administration’s energy and environmental policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a seemingly non-existent railroad from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and “one of the largest solar plants in the world” in Angola. To fund this solar plant — which is a partnership between the Angolan government, and U.S.-based firms AfricaGlobal Schaffer and...

Over the past five years, the United States’ largest independent oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil, has mostly focused its exploratory activities in South America.Last month, the oil major announced that it had made two new discoveries at the Sailfin-1 and Yarrow-1 wells in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana, potentially adding more barrels to one of the most closely watched new oil discoveries. ExxonMobil has now made more than 30 discoveries on the block since 2015, and has ramped up offshore development and production at a pace that far exceeds the industry average.In contrast, Exxon’s exploits in Africa have been...

A 170-carat pink diamond – dubbed The Lulo Rose – was discovered at the Lulo mine in the country’s diamond-rich northeast and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors. The “historic” find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine. The diamond will be sold at international tender, likely at a dazzling price. Although The Lulo Rose would have to be cut and polished to realize its true...

Mexican authorities found the body of an Angolan migrant child who went missing on May 2 during an illegal border crossing near the Del Rio International Bridge. The young boy disappeared after being swept away along with his brother. The parents survived the crossing. Del Rio Station Border Patrol agents encountered an Angolan couple who illegally crossed the border from Mexico into Texas. The husband and wife informed the agents that their two boys, ages seven and nine, were swept away in the strong currents of the Rio Grande, according to information obtained from Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials.

The poor performance of Russian equipment deployed in the Ukraine war is bound to be giving global buyers second thoughts.How can it be that a large Russian army attacking force, capable of causing untold destruction, is being checkmated and systematically devastated by Ukraine’s military, in particular its special forces?And what impact will this have on the Russian army and its industrial backbone, the Russian companies that build the tanks, armored personnel carriers, mobile air defenses and aircraft including fixed-wing and helicopters ­– all of which have suffered extreme losses in the conflict?Russia’s exports consist of various commodities, most prominently wheat,...

A new species of tarantula was discovered in the southwestern African nation of Angola. What’s most intriguing about this new spider, called Ceratogyrus attonitifer, is the horn-like appendage protruding from its back. It belongs to the genus of Ceratogyrus (horned baboon spiders), yet scientists haven’t seen anything quite like this new species. The researcher who discovered the horned tarantula, John Midgley, showed photos of the arachnid to Ian Engelbrecht, an expert on spiders, and he didn’t believe the pictures were real at first. “I knew then we had discovered a new species,” Midgley told National Geographic. “It’s rare to know...

The Chinese government is in a massive resource grab in Africa, which has huge ramifications for natural resource prices, not the least of which will be the cost of imported oil to the U.S., and ultimately the stock market and economy. Beijing's latest foray is trying to buy 6 billion barrels of oil that is already spoken for via leases to Exxon, Chevron , Royal Dutch Shell, and Total SA. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. presently leases 16 oil blocks on what remains of the oil industry's dominant Seven Sisters. It's a monster development, and a dramatic signal of how...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 31, 2020   Officer Was Previously Convicted of Related Obstruction Offenses Daniel Davis, 44, a former major at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) in Angola, Louisiana, was found guilty by a jury yesterday in federal court for his participation in the beating of an inmate who was handcuffed, shackled, and not resisting and for failing to intervene to stop his subordinates from participating in the same beating. In a previous trial in January 2018, Davis was convicted of conspiring with other officers to cover up the beating by...

Nigeria has long been known for its oil riches. Angola has too, but decades of entrenched corruption have chased foreign investors away. Now Namibia is joining the African oil conversation with one of the most oil-friendly regimes on the continent. It’s offering 5% royalties on what might just be a very productive shale play in Reconnaissance Africa’s (RECO.V) Kavango Basin. Emerging markets are where oil upside might be found these days but navigating them is a challenge.

This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

New Book Demolishes Arab Armies of Sand “Arab armed forces consistently underperformed, and underperformed in the same ways time and again, regardless of who they fought or where, the state of their politics, or the relative state of economic development between them and their foe.” So concludes scholar Kenneth M. Pollack in his magisterial book on the cultural roots of disastrous post-1945 Arab military performance, Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness. Pollack presents an encyclopedic, withering critique of Arab militaries across decades in numerous varied conflicts, to substantiate the conclusion that: Arab militaries were...

... The threat of bringing in dangerous diseases is higher than ever, yet there are no mandatory and universal screenings, quarantines, or universal detention before illegal immigrants are released into our communities, often within hours. According to preliminary weekly data used internally by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and given to CR by a border patrol agent who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press, over 550 African migrants were apprehended in Texas in just one week - from May 30 through June 5. The lion's share come from Democratic Republic of Congo, the...

In an unprecedented move last week, India voted in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation named ‘Shahed’. This is the first time India has taken a step back from its decades-old position on the two-state theory under which New Delhi sees both Israel and Palestine as separate and independent countries, seeking to bring peace in West Asia.The vote, which took place on 6 June at the UN, saw countries such as US, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and Canada polling in favour of...

Chimpanzee meat is being served as a delicacy at British weddings and served as 'bush meat' on market stalls it has emerged. The border force is under pressure to introduce DNA testing to identify the meat at customs and has said it would be investing in new technology to tackle the rising issue. Leading primate scientist Dr. Ben Garrod had said he was told by customs officials just weeks ago that a ton of bush meat from West Africa had been confiscated on a flight bound for the U.S. He said it was routinely smuggled into Europe and the UK...

In Congo, the ebola epidemic is back. Axios has a disturbing chart showing a sharp arc upward based on Congolese government data. Total cases have gone to from virtually nothing last August to 2,031 now — and the data suggest that the trend has not peaked. That's news, because right now, Congolese migrants have begun crossing our unguarded southern border in large numbers. According to the Voice of America: U.S. Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 150 African immigrants [sic] attempting unauthorized crossings into Texas at the U.S. southern border within the past week, according to U.S. Customs and...

We have followed the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo for over six months. Officials have reported nearly 3,000 cases of the hemorrhagic disease. However, the actual number of infected Congolese may be a third higher than figures show, experts have warned [link to stats from the WHO]. Public health officials have also indicated this particular outbreak could last as long as two years. ... Meanwhile, Texas officials scrambled this week to find French speaking volunteers to help with 350 Congolese migrants arriving in the state. "We didn't get a heads up," Interim Assistant City Manager Dr....

el Rio Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 500 migrants from the continent of Africa since May 30. The numbers jumped after large numbers of African migrants adopted a strategy of crossing in large numbers. On Wednesday, a group of 34 African migrants crossed the border illegally near Eagle Pass, Texas. Eagle Pass Station agents apprehended a group of 34 illegal aliens from Africa on June 5, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials. On May 30, large numbers of African migrants who had been waiting in Mexico to cross at ports...

A group of illegals from Angola, Cameroon and Congo waded across the Rio Grande River and into the United States, video from Customs and Border Protection shows. The video shows male and female adults walking through the water and into Texas, several with children on their shoulders.