PM Roble seeks legal means to accept US oil company’s deal that was rejected by former president

By Star Staff Writer

Outgoing Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble is looking for a way he can legally accept a roundly rejected secret agreement the petroleum minister earlier this year cut with a U.S. company, which — if approved — would have given the four-year-old entity the right to explore oil and gas in the country, three Somali sources told The Somalia Star.

It’s unclear whether Roble has already acted on his desire. He only needs to write an official letter accepting Coastline Exploration’s much-criticized deal on Feb. 19 with Petroleum Minister Abdirashid Mohamed Ahmed through the ministry of foreign affairs, whose minister he suspended on Tuesday.

Roble did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The shocking revelation is believed to be a part of frenetic efforts by the outgoing Cabinet and incoming officials to make use of — and even monetize — the transition period, create new realities, cut new deals with foreign entities, settle old scores and roll back policies of former President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmajo”.

And these officials appear to be in a tearing hurry.

In a span of only nine days, major policy changes that would have typically taken months of deliberation and consultation have been undertaken by the new president. On May 16, his first day in office, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud accepted — with a blithe disregard for parliament approval and for the lives of Somalis killed by American drones — a US request to deploy troops in the country. Eight days later, he accepted a European Union request to extend its 13-year-old military operation off the coast of Somalia, sources told The Star. On Tuesday, the president appointed Hussein Moallim Mohamud — a critic of the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea, both of whom allies of former President Farmajo — as his national security adviser.

Internal Security Minister Abdullahi Mohamed Nor has also quietly allowed back the importation of a Kenyan leaf called khat that was banned by President Farmajo’s administration. Sources told The Star that Nor and a Kenyan national, Kimathi Munjuri, chairman of Miraa Traders Association, had founded a new company — SomKen — to bring the stimulant leaf to Somalia. Nor did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

“If the current pattern persists, the next four years will likely be full of clan politics, revenge and disqualification of people of substance,” said Ali Abdullahi Adowe, who said he was considering whether to withdraw his application to the president for the position of prime minister.

The damning accusation against the premier came as a surprise to many. When the news of the pact emerged, he called it “illegal, unacceptable since it wasn’t done through legal avenues.”

“I will take all appropriate measures to protect our national resources,” the premier tweeted on Feb. 19.

Former President Farmajo and Auditor General Mohamed Mohamud Ali have also objected to the deal and called it “illegal” and null and void.

But, sources speculated that the allure of the Texas-based company’s millions of dollars of signature bonus may have motivated Roble to change his mind.

The three Somali sources, who shared the information with The Star on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the US company has been doggedly trying to coax Somali officials into accepting its deal.

“The suspension of Foreign Minister Abdisaid Muse was just a ploy by Prime Minister Roble to get him out of the way to use the foreign ministry’s signature,” a source said. “Roble is seeking legal means to accept the illegal deal with Coastline so as it releases to him millions of dollars. He doesn’t care about the country’s future well-being.”

Prime Minister Roble suspended Muse on Tuesday, accusing him of authorizing the release of a ship carrying Somali charcoal that was anchored at an Omani port. Muse denied the allegation, saying in a brief interview with The Star that he was “always at the forefront of the campaign to ban Somalia’s illicit charcoal trade.”

A source at Somalia’s Foreign Ministry told The Star that Muse’s suspension had nothing to do with the charcoal trade. Prime Minister Roble wanted “to milk the moment before a replacement is appointed”, the source said.

As the nation’s top diplomat, Muse was the only obstacle standing between Coastline and its dream of securing a legal permit to explore oil and gas in the country. And removing Muse from office made all the more sense. Foreign lawyers told the foreign ministry that the agreeement would have been legal had the Somali government not written official letters rejecting it.

In an April 5 letter Muse sent to Coastline that was exclusively obtained by The Star, Somalia’s foreign ministry insisted that the agreement was “contrary to Somali law” and not in conformity with “the Procurement Act, the Petroleum Act and the Somali Provisional Constitution” as well as President Farmajo’s Aug. 7, 2021 directive barring officials from entering into agreements during presidential and parliamentary elections that ended on May 15.

Relations between Roble and Muse have not always been perfect. Muse was once a national security adviser to former President Farmajo with whom the premier clashed during the elections.

Nevertheless, in Somalia’s messy politics, Roble had little options but to work with Muse, although a source within the foreign minister said that the premier stealthily worked with the heads of certain departments within the ministry without Muse’s knowledge.

A source said Prime Minister Roble had in two private meetings asked Muse to “acquiesce to the deal” with Coastline.

“Minister, is it Farmajo who assigned you to the petroleum case. Why are you following it up? Leave it,” Roble told Muse in one of their meetings, according to the Somali source privy to the two men’s conversation.

The Somali government has many reasons to reject the Coastline’s deal. The company, which was started in 2018, is a blip on the global oil industry. It has no history of working in another country, and Somalia’s now-cancelled deal was the only one it ever got to carry out oil and gas explorations, a fact that raised concerns among many Somalis who feared that the company could, in effect, prove an impediment to their country’s hydrocarbon development.

Somalis’ reaction to the allegation against Prime Minister Roble has been fast and furious.

“Prime Minister Roble must come out clean on this stinging allegation and tell the Somali public why he’s engaged in secret talks with a company whose deal was rejected by everyone, including himself,” Lawmaker Dahir Amin Jeesow told The Star. “Parliamentarians must raise their voices in protest and demand answers from Roble who seems to be living a double life.”

Former Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, a close ally of former President Farmajo, said he was even less optimistic about the new, Mohamud-led administration, calling it “disaster” and “unguided missile”.

“Mr. President, you have got to intervene to stop this madness. You must urgently issue a strict moratorium barring the outgoing prime minister and his Cabinet members from entering into any new agreements with foreign countries and organizations or accepting or amending agreements already rejected by the previous government,” said Gedi. “Mr. President, you can not remain silent in the face of this shameless attempt by Roble to exploit the transition period to get more bribes from foreign companies and countries.”

The president’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Coastline’s deal elicited renewed attention after Foreign Minister Muse survived an apparent assassination attempt that sparked speculations on whether he was targeted because of the foreign ministry’s rejection of the deal.

About 40 gunmen on four vehicles mounted with weapons attacked Muse as he was breaking the Ramadan fast on the outskirts of the central Somali town of Galkayo with his daughter who visited him from Switzerland, where she lives. One of the minister’s six guards was killed and a clan elder was injured during the more than one-hour exchange of gunfire.

When Muse met with Prime Minister Roble after his return to Mogadishu, the premier — avoiding eye contact, according to a source — conveyed his sympathy to Muse. His government, however, didn’t issue any official statement on the attack on one of its ministers, a silence that stirred up suspicions of foul play and of the possible involvement of some government officials in a sinister scheme aimed at eliminating Muse to pave the way for a pliant substitute.

Coastline, in a letter dated March 8, 2022 and obtained by The Star, protested the Somali government’s position, arguing, without providing any evidence, that “the terms” of the production-sharing agreements it signed with Petroleum Minister Ahmed on Feb. 19 were “legal, valid, binding and enforceable upon the Federal Government.”

Coasatline did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

On March 28, Petroleum Minister Ahmed said he “gave a briefing” to the US Ambassador to Somalia, Larry Andre, “on the developments we made so far on the Somalia Petroleum Sector.” His tweet accompanied by a photo of the minister standing by Andre’s left side, prompted angry responses from Somalis who feared that the ambassador, who also on March 10 met Roble, could have been lobbying for the US company.

“Why on earth would you be briefing a foreign embassy? Do you even know what you did? Where in the world do serving ministers brief foreign ambassadors?” asked WiilWaal, a Twitter user.

“This is corruption at highest level,” wrote Mustafa Mohamed in his reply to the minister’s tweet.

On Feb. 19, Ahmed surprised the nation with his shock announcement that the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and the Somali Petroleum Authority have signed seven production sharing agreements with Coastline Exploration Limited “to launch the exploration for hydrocarbons offore Somalia”, where oil and gas exploration started in the early 1950, with Shell, Exxon, BP, Total and Chevron being the first companies attracted to the country.

He said the agreements “will have an immediate positive impact on the Country” and are “expected to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the Federal Government, its members’ (sic) states, and the local communities in the form of signature bonuses, training, community, and rental fees.”

“This is a huge moment for Somalia,” declared Ahmed in his two page statement. He did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Coastline’s tireless set of tactics to secure a binding agreement from Somali officials before the new President Mohamud appoints a prime minister only highlights the broader drive by opportunistic foreign entities to squeeze favorable deals from members of the outgoing Cabinet.

Foreign countries and Mogadishu-based diplomats have also begun to cozy up to the new president soon after his election victory, in stark contrast to their dealings with his predecessor, Farmajo, who accorded little time to foreign officials during his more than five years in office and instead focused on domestic agendas, especially on the security sector.

Those early communications to President Mohamud have already paid off.

On Wednesday, the agreed to extend the EU’s much-vilified military operation, ATALANTA, off the coast of Somalia, by six months, after the bloc’s Special Representative for the Horn of Africa Annette Weber delivered a request to him, according to a Somali source. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, indirectly admitted that he had raised the extension issue with the president when he spoke with him by phone on May 20, the same day a new reports by OceanMind and by Blue Marine and Kroll revealed that Spanish- and French-owned vessels with large fishing nets — known as purse seine, which is used to capture large groups of fish — have been illegally fishing in the waters of Somalia between 2017 and 2020 without access agreements from the Somali government.

“There is evidence to suggest that some of these fleets are fishing in coastal states’ waters without any kind of authorization and we call on the European Commission to investigate these instances as a matter of urgency,” said Charles Clover, the executive director of Blue Marine Foundation.

The reports said the EU’s fleet is the “number-one harvester” of the overfished yellowfin stock in the Indian Ocean. These industrial vessels, said the reports, catch three species of tropical tuna together as well as bigeye tuna and skipjack, whose catch limit was ignored for the last three years despite being subject to overfishing. Skipjack is the most abundant of the major commercial tuna species, said the reports.

Former President Farmajo’s administration spurned the EU’s request for the extension of the naval mission. In fact, it questioned the viability of the EU’s overall operation as no ship was successfully hijacked for ransom since March 2017.

The UN Security Council extended the mandate of the EU’s ATALANTA mission — launched on Dec. 8, 2008 — by three months on March 3 after which Somalia was allowed to cut its own bilateral maritime deals with individual countries.

Somalia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Abukar Dahir Osman told the council at the time that militarization of Somali national waters had nothing to do with piracy and armed robbery.

“As you all are aware, piracy is only one of the many threats” in Somalia’s territorial waters, Osman told the council, noting that there was a need to fight against illegal, under-reported and unregulated fishing in Somalia’s exclusive economic zone.

In 2019, Somalia established the Department of Maritime Administration under Ministry of Ports and Marine Transport to “ensure safety of life and property at sea and to promote Somalia maritime transport services” and do away with foreign navies patrolling off the coast of the country. Last year, Somalia has withdrawn from the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, saying that it was neither inclusive nor useful as the body’s work was not aligned with the country’s strategic priorities.

The EU mission — which many Somalis believe is a cover to protect European ships illegally fishing in Somali waters — appears tailored to fulfil objectives that runs counter to Somali aspirations of developing a naval force that is independent and self-sufficient. For instance, the EU mission operates under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, which, in its last year’s Resolution 2608, falsely claimed that Somalia “continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security in the region.”

The “incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia, as well as the activity of pirate groups in Somalia, are an important factor exacerbating the situation in Somalia,” the resolution falsely claimed, even though it acknowledged that no ship was hijacked off the coast of Somalia for more than five years.

The existence of the EU Naval force, Operation ATALANTA, underscores the union’s obsession with the waters off Somalia.

In 2012, the EU launched a civilian maritime capacity building mission called EUCAP Nestor in Djibouti, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania. But three years later, “following a strategic review of the Mission,” the bloc decided to “focus solely on Somalia”, finally rebranding the mission as the European Union Capacity Building, or EUCAP Somalia, and relocating its headquarters from Djibouti to Mogadishu.

The budget of EUCAP Somalia for 2021-2022 is € 86.78 million, with 114 international staff members and only 21 Somalis.