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FG Introduces New Electricity Tariff July
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The Federal Government has announced the new date for the implementation of new electricity tariff in Nigeria.
Speaking, on Tuesday, at an investors’ forum in Lagos on Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) successor companies, organised by the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), the Director-General of National Electricity Regulatory Company (NERC), Mallam Haliru Dikko, said the new date for the effective implementation of MYTO would be on July 1, 2011.
According to him, stakeholders’ interests were well protected to ensure recovery of efficient cost, including a reasonable rate of return and it would give incentives to capacity building.
It was observed that there were recent reports that the Federal Government planned to introduce new electricity tariff during the first quarter of 2011, a claim which the government disclaimed.
Consequently, the Federal Government announced that the new tariff plan would favour all concerned stakeholders by protecting consumers’ interests and guaranteeing investors’ ability to recoup their investments.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of BPE, Mrs Bolanle Onagoruwa, has applauded the power sector reform, arguing that the reform would save the country about N150 billion ($1 billion) annually and would promote additional two digit growth to the economy.
“The government expects a lot from the private investors and the consumers in ensuring that the reform becomes successful,” she said.
The Chairman of the communication committee of the presidential task force on power, Abimbola Agboluaje, had initially announced mid-year for the announcement to be made after due consultations the level tariffs that would enable investors to recover costs.
“By mid-2011, an appreciable proportion of generating and distributing capacity would have been transfered to private sector hands, new private generating capacity would have been fully contracted and under procurement,” he said.
More Jobs as 18 PHCN Successor Firms Take Off
In March This Year, The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) Successor Companies Will Begin Operation, Raising Hope of More Jobs.
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ARE you an engineer and in search of a job? Your worries may soon be over as the 18 firms that emerged from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) take off in March. Start dusting up your resume for the job opportunities that will arise from these new entities.
Sources told The Nation that some engineers and skilled technicians have been lobbying officials of the Ministry of Power since they learnt that the firms are set to take off.
An engineer, Sola Adeniji, said the take off will be beneficial to job seekers, if the government disallows foreign investors from importing labour.
Chairman, Communications Committee, Presidential Task Force on Power, Dr Abimbola Agboluaje, said PHCN workers are already moving out of the company’s headquarters to the Ministry of Power and the successor companies. He said functions are already being transferred to individual successor companies.
"The eventual winding-up will be a legal or court-ordered formality, occurring when ongoing staff movements and transfer of assets and liabilities are concluded, probably during the first quarter of this year."
He said the goal of the power sector reform is to transform the sector from one that absorbs government funds every year without any improvement in service delivery to one that supplies electric power to Nigerians whenever they want to use it and also be a source of revenue that the government can spend on social services. The leadership of the National Assembly has reminded the Federal Government frequently of the imperative of continuing with the reform which has been mandated by law. The reform is therefore fully on course and has become irreversible."
The Presidential Task Force on Power, he said, is committed to replicating the success Nigeria recorded with the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector in the power sector, with all the potentials this has for a far more fundamental impact on job creation and economic growth in the country.
"Political support from the highest quarters of Government has notwaned. Indeed, regardless of the increased tempo of electioneering, there is continued pressure, not only from the government but also from manufacturers, the media, civil society groups and others on the Presidential Task Force on Power to deliver tangible results to Nigerians.
Delta State Governorship
It's Ogboru Vs. Uduaghan
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The governorship election in Delta State, seen as a litmus test ahead of nationwide polls, may end on a controversial note, following widespread acts of sabotage and violence. Thousands of armed police and soldiers were drafted to the state for the re-run election, held after a court last year overturned the 2007 victory of governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, a member of the PDP.
Uduaghan main challenger is Great Ogboru of the Democratic People's Party. Reports from activist groups indicate that Ogboru took a clear lead in the polls. But his supporters have alleged attempts by the PDP to manipulate the figures to his disadvantage.
Delta is one of three main states in the Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa's biggest oil and gas industry and a restive region seen as a potential flashpoint during presidential and parliamentary elections in April. Voting started late in some areas and at many polling stations voters complained they could not find their names on the electoral lists. Opposition officials and supporters complained of intimidation in some areas.
Alaibe Resigns, as Jonathan Makes Two Appointments
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The Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Timi Alaibe has resigned his appointment to join the governorship race in Bayelsa State.
President Jonathan has since accepted the resignation.
Meanwhile, Mr Alaibe has dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and joined Labour Party to contest the Bayelsa governorship election in the forth coming elections.
He said his decision to join the Labour Party was motivated by its resilience to represent the interest of the ordinary Nigerians in Bayelsa State.
In a related development, President Jonathan has appointed two new special Assistants, Emmanuel Egbagbe and Saidu Yusuf Dutsi.
Egbagbe is now the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Infrastructure Development Matters while Saidu Yusuf Dutsi is the new Senior Special Assistant to the President on Political Matters.
Until his appointment, Egbagbe was the Director of Infrastructure Development at the Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.
He holds a Masters of Sciences degree in Water Resources Systems from the University of California and was the best graduating student of Civil Engineering at the University of Lagos in 1977.
On his own part, Alhaji Dutsi who holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy and Administration from Bayero University Kano, has held various elective and appointive posts in his native Katsina State.
Both appointments which take effect from January 1, 2011 are to fill vacancies created by the appointment of Mr. Femi Ajayi (former SSA to the President on Social Development)as Director-General of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency and the death of Senator Polycarp Nwite (former SSA to the President on Political Matters).
U.S. Presses China Again Over Jailed Geologist.
Reuters News.
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The United States pressed China again Tuesday to release a U.S. geologist jailed on charges of stealing state secrets, saying his case had not been handled transparently.
Xue Feng, who was born in China and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen, was detained late in 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employer at the time, Colorado-based consultancy IHS Energy, now known as IHS Inc.
"Our sense has been that the case has not been handled with the kind of transparency that would befit a nation which tells us that the rule of law is paramount in all judicial processes," said Robert Goldberg, U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission.
Goldberg said the embassy had filed a formal protest with the Chinese Foreign Ministry after being denied permission to attend Xue's appeal at a Beijing court Tuesday.
"We urge the Chinese to grant Dr. Xue humanitarian release and immediate deportation so that he can return home to the U.S. and reunite with his family," the diplomat told reporters outside the courthouse.
"I'm hoping that this is not an issue that we will have to address during President Hu's visit," Goldberg added, referring to Chinese President Hu Jintao's planned trip to the United States in January.
Sino-U.S. relations have been strained this year over a range of issues, from Tibet to Taiwan and the value of the Chinese currency.
China has previously denounced U.S. involvement in Xue's case, saying it was handled in accordance with the law and was an internal matter.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China would "continue to fulfill relevant obligations based on the China-U.S. consular convention" and handle the case "according to Chinese laws." He did not elaborate.
Goldberg said Xue, who has been allowed consular visits in jail where he is serving an eight-year sentence, was in surprisingly good spirits.
"We believe at this point he is not being mistreated," Goldberg added.
Xue was convicted of attempting to obtain and traffic in state secrets, a year after his trial ended, according to the Duihua Foundation, which promotes prisoners' rights in China and the United States.
The database was classified as a state secret only after it was sold, it added.
China's notoriously vague state secrets laws received international attention last year when Australian citizen Stern Hu and three colleagues working for mining giant Rio Tinto were detained for stealing state secrets during the course of tense iron ore negotiations.
The four were later convicted of the lesser charges of receiving kickbacks and stealing commercial secrets.
Giant star burning itself out
Astronomers said last week they had figured out just how heavy a star was that they spotted five years ago in a neighboring galaxy.
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Their verdict: probably the heaviest ever -- like, 320 times heavier than the sun at one time.
Astrophysicist Paul Crowther said the obese star -- twice as heavy as any previously discovered -- has slimmed down considerably over its lifetime.
In fact, it's burning itself off with such intensity that it shines at nearly 10 million times the luminosity of the sun.
"Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age," said Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield in northern England.
Crowther said the giant, named R136a1, was identified at the center of a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, a sprawling cloud of gas and dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 165,000 light-years from the Milky Way.
The star was the most massive of several giants identified by Crowther and his team in an article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
But size matters
Scores of other stars are larger -- notably the swollen crimson-colored ones known as red giants. But they weigh far less.
Some red giants are so big they fill the orbit of the Earth.
Still, the mass of R136a1 and its ilk means they're tens of times bigger than the sun and they're brighter and hotter, too.
Surface temperatures can surpass 72,000 degrees Fahrenheit, seven times hotter than the sun. They're also several million times brighter, because the greedy giants tear through their energy reserves far faster than their smaller counterparts.
That also means that massive stars live fast and die young, quickly shedding huge amounts of material and burning themselves out in what are thought to be spectacular explosions.
"The biggest live only 3 million years," Crowther said. "In astronomy, that's a very short time."
Short life spans are one of several reasons these obese stars are so hard to find. Another is that they're extremely rare, forming only in the densest star clusters.
Astronomers also have a limited range in which to look for them. In clusters that are too far away, it isn't always possible to tell whether a telescope has picked up on one heavyweight star or two smaller ones in close proximity.
US Government Demands Immediate Answers On BP Oil Spill Containment
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Tightening its clutches on oil giant BP plc. (BP: News ,BP.L: News ), the U.S. government has demanded an immediate report detailing plans to improve its containment and clean-up efforts on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is coordinating the government response to the Gulf oil spill, sent a letter on Thursday to BP's Managing Director Bob Dudley asking the company to submit within 24 hours "detailed plans and time-lines" on containing the 80-day-old major oil leak.
The information is sought as the government is concerned over the risks involved in BP's plans to change caps on the oil well.
This is the second letter sent to British Petroleum recently reflecting the Obama administration's stringent scrutiny on the oil major over the oil spill.
In a June 23 letter to BP's General Counsel Rupert Bondy, the Department of Justice sought advance information about any major asset sales, merger deals, or significant cash transfers if the company plans to do so.
Despite growing anger over its inability to stop the leak, the oil giant has only managed to capture and flare about 22,750 barrels of oil a day through two containment systems placed over the wellhead last month.
The British behemoth had earlier said that it could raise the capture rate to at least 40,000 barrels by early July and could handle a flow of 60,000-80,000 barrels per day by mid-July.
At-sea oil cleanup idled by poor weather in Gulf
Gulf of Mexico
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Across a wide stretch of the Gulf of Mexico, the cleanup of the region's worst-ever oil spill has been essentially landlocked for more than a week, leaving skimmers stuck close to shore.
Last week, the faraway Hurricane Alex idled the skimming fleet off Alabama, Florida and Mississippi with choppy seas and stiff winds. Now they're stymied by a succession of smaller storms that could last well into this week.
"We're just lying in wait to see if we can send some people out there to do some skimming," said Courtnee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the Joint Information Command in Mobile, Ala.
Officials have plans for the worst-case scenario: a hurricane barreling up the Gulf toward the spill site. But the less-dramatic weather conditions have been met with a more makeshift response.
Skimming operations across the Gulf have scooped up about 23.5 million gallons of oil-fouled water so far, but officials say it's impossible to know how much crude could have been skimmed in good weather because of the fluctuating number of vessels and other variables.
Jerry Biggs, a commercial fisherman in Pass Christian, Miss., who has had to shut down because of the spill, is now hiring out his 13 boats and 40-man crew to BP for cleanup. He said the skimming operation is severely hampered by the weather.
"We don't even have the equipment to do the job right," Biggs said. "The (equipment) we're trying to do this with is inoperable in over 1 foot of seas."
From Louisiana, where skimming resumed after a three-day halt last week, to Florida, there are about 44,500 people, nearly 6,600 boats and 113 aircraft enlisted in the cleanup and containment effort, according to BP PLC.
The British company has now seen its costs from the spill reach $3.12 billion, a figure that doesn't include a $20 billion fund for damages the company created last month.
For many involved in the cleanup effort, nagging storms have whipped up choppy seas and gusty winds that make offshore work both unsafe and ineffective, stranding crews on dry land.
"We have to send our guys out every day and look at the weather and ask, 'Can we do this?'" said Courtnee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the Joint Information Command in Mobile, Ala., which oversees operations in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
In the absence of offshore skimming, efforts in the three Gulf states east of Louisiana have turned largely on containment boom, about 550 miles of which has been deployed along the entire Gulf, and shoreline efforts to clean tar balls and other oily debris from beaches.
"We're operating 24 hours a day on the beaches, and anything that washes ashore we're able to get," Ferguson said.
It may be days before those beach crews are aided by skimming vessels, though, according to weather forecasters.
Heavy rain and scattered thunderstorms are predicted throughout the region into Wednesday, National Weather Service meteorolgist Tim Destri said Monday. The National Hurricane Center is also watching a low pressure system in the Caribbean Sea that has a low chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next two days.
If it does develop, it would more likely head toward northern Mexico or southern Texas, Destri said. But it's too early to predict its path with certainty.
The storms have not affected drilling work on a relief well that BP says is the best chance for finally plugging the leak. The company expects drilling to be finished by mid-August.
As it works to both clean up and contain the spill, BP is billing partners Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Japan's Mitsui for their shares of the cleanup. BP has billed Anadarko, a 25-percent stakeholder in the blown-out well, for more than a quarter billion dollars so far. It also has reportedly billed Mitsui, a 10-percent partner, for $111 million.
Biggs, clearly angry over the situation, said the hurricane season will just further hurt the cleanup effort, saying one big storm will push the oil everywhere.
"This isn't going away. This isn't a sneeze or a hiccup. This is diarrhea for a long time," he said. "My lifestyle is screwed. It's over. The thing that I love the most I'm not going to be able to do anymore."
British Court Grant Extradition in US Bribery Case
Haliburton Nigerian Oil Bribery Case
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A Westminster magistrate has ruled that, like his co-accused Jeffrey Tesler, above, Wojciech Chodan should be extradited to the US to face charges in connection with a Nigerian gas contract. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA A second Briton accused of being involved in a huge international bribery scheme should be sent to the US to stand trial, a judge ruled today.
District judge Caroline Tubbs decided at Westminster magistrates court that the 72-year-old retired sales executive, Wojciech Chodan, should be extradited to Texas to be tried.
US prosecutors accuse him and a 61-year-old London lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler, of conspiring with others to pay bribes of $132m (£86m) to Nigerian officials to secure a $6bn contract to construct liquefied natural gas plants at Bonny Island, on the coast of Nigeria.
The duo, who face up to 55 years in jail if convicted, have the right to appeal to the higher courts if the Home Secretary also decides that they should be extradited. There has been disquiet that the British government has been too willing to allow its citizens to be flown to the US to be prosecuted for a range of crimes. Tubbs rejected Chodan's attempt to stop the extradition proceedings. It follows her ruling last month that Tesler should be extradited.
Chodan worked for a firm owned by the US oil services group Halliburton, which led the consortium seeking the Nigerian contract.
The US alleges that Chodan, who lives in the Somerset village of Nunney, was on a committee that devised plans to bribe the Nigerians. He had "numerous discussions" with Tesler and others to ensure that the bribes were paid over a 10-year period, the court heard.
The cash is alleged to have been laundered through Switzerland and Monaco.
Tubbs ruled that Chodan's alleged conduct had "sufficiently substantial connection" with the US to justify the extradition.
She decided that KBR, the US firm he worked for, "received considerable financial benefit from the corrupt scheme" and that executives of the firm "committed acts in furtherance of the corrupt bribery scheme in Houston, Texas". Tesler and Chodan are alleged to have conspired with Jack Stanley, the Texan chief executive of KBR, who has already pleaded guilty to his involvement in the bribery scheme, as a result of the investigation by the US prosecutors.Chodan declined to comment.
Obama's New Nuclear Strategy Is Intended as a Message to Iran and North Korea
WASHINGTON
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At the heart of President Obama’s new nuclear strategy lies a central gamble: that an aging, oversize, increasingly outmoded nuclear arsenal can be turned to the new purpose of adding leverage to the faltering effort to force Iran and North Korea to rethink the value of their nuclear programs.
The 50-page “Nuclear Posture Review” released on Tuesday acknowledged outright that “the massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the cold-war era” is “poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorist and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons.”
Nonetheless, the new strategy aims to use the arsenal to do just that, despite considerable skepticism that any new doctrine or set of White House announcements is likely to change the calculus for North Korea or Iran.
Mr. Obama’s new strategy makes just about every nonnuclear state immune from any threat of nuclear retaliation by the United States. But it carves out an exception for Iran and North Korea, labeled “outliers” rather than the Bush-era moniker of “rogue states.” The wording was chosen, Mr. Obama’s senior advisers said, to suggest they have a path back to international respectability — and to de-targeting by the United States.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates made the choice explicit. “There is a message for Iran and North Korea here,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Nonnuclear states that abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would not be threatened with nuclear retaliation by the United States — even if they conducted conventional, biological or cyber attacks. But, he added, “if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.”
A number of analysts argued that by publicly painting a target on Iran and North Korea the administration could, perhaps unwittingly, bolster hard-liners in those countries, who have made the case that nuclear weapons are the only way to ensure their safety against American plotting.
The opposite critique came from two senior Republican Party national security experts — Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, both of Arizona — who contended that the pressure was not direct enough.
“We believe that preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation should begin by directly confronting the two leading proliferators and supporters of terrorism, Iran and North Korea,” they wrote. “The Obama administration’s policies, thus far, have failed to do that, and this failure has sent exactly the wrong message to other would be proliferators and supporters of terrorism.”
To Mr. Obama and his aides, the “outlier” approach is all part of a broader strategy of adding to the pressure on both countries. Over the past year, they have aided the interception of North Korea’s shipping. They have sought to develop new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and to undermine its nuclear program with a program of covert action.
Robert S. Litwak, vice president for programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that Mr. Obama had expanded an effort begun by President George W. Bush to globalize the effort to contain the nuclear aims of both nations.
Under Mr. Obama’s strategy, he said, “It is the United States and the world versus Iran, not just the United States versus Iran.” (Mr. Bush’s former aides note that during their time in office, they pushed through four United Nations Security Council resolutions against Tehran, though to little effect.)
The new strategy takes that effort one step further, warning both countries that the United States could still use its nuclear arsenal to counter any effort to sell or transfer the country’s nuclear technology to terrorists.
“The United States will continue to hold accountable any state, terrorist group or other nonstate actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Gates said on Tuesday, “whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts.”
The problem Mr. Obama faces is that the Bush administration used virtually identical language to warn North Korea soon after it conducted a nuclear test in 2006. The next year, however, North Korea was caught helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. Israel destroyed the site in a nighttime raid in 2007. But North Korea paid little price for what is widely regarded as its most audacious attempt at nuclear proliferation.
Mr. Obama, asked on Monday whether that episode harmed American credibility, said, “I don’t think countries around the world are interested in testing our credibility when it comes to these issues.
“The message we’re sending here,” he said, was that countries that “actively pursue a proliferation agenda” would not be immune from any form of American retaliation, including nuclear.
The reality is more complex. If a backpack nuclear bomb went off in Times Square or on the Mall in Washington, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy would race to find the nuclear DNA of the weapon — so that the country that was the source of the material could be punished. But the science of “nuclear attribution” is still sketchy. And without certain attribution, it is hard to seriously threaten retaliation.
The nuclear review also details a larger set of tools to shape the behavior of Iran and North Korea. By reducing the size of America’s own stockpiles, and assuring nonnuclear states inside the nonproliferation treaty that they are exempt from any nuclear attack, the administration hopes to bolster its credentials to close huge loopholes in the treaty that both North Korea and Iran have artfully exploited.
“We think we now have credibility Bush never did,” one of Mr. Obama’s aides said, “to tighten the noose. But it will be a very, very slow process.”
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