It’s a special kind of madness to try and develop gas projects in Africa. I’ve done it more than once—got close and cozy with the national oil companies, the local “partners,” and the assorted chorus of functionaries who insist they’re essential to any deal. Back then I was wearing an OMV badge, tasked with sniffing out LNG for the company’s stake in the Dutch GATE terminal. That meant looking where no one sane really wanted to look.
In the end, OMV did what large corporations excel at: they grew a conscience of the financial variety, got the jitters, and retreated before the seed could ever sprout. To be fair, this was never a walk in the park, even on the best of days. Every African partner I courted had already cashed the imaginary checks the moment I mentioned a project. Their mental spreadsheets were overflowing with riches they had no earthly reason to believe would ever materialize.Then came the baroque torture of local content rules—deliberately opaque, eternally shifting, and designed to guarantee nothing moves unless someone gets paid. And, of course, the pièce de résistance: actually getting hold of the gas. Oil producers weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of us trampling their turf. They preferred the far simpler method of torching the stuff skyward, paying their fines, and carrying on with their lives.