Daniel gilbert's Blog (30)

The below please is posted on behalf of my friend and colleague Ann Kritzinger, Zimbabwe Geological Survey (pictured left), Harare, Zimbabwe; and Associate member International Scientific Committee on Archaeological…

Being the first of a two-part GOXI blog on the environmental claims and counter-claims regarding UK unconventional petroleum extraction, and competing stakeholder viewpoints on all of the above

As described by Scottish tourism agency, Visit Scotland, “Airth is a pretty conservation village that lies on the south bank of the River Forth”, upstream of Edinburgh,…

The newspaper front-page headline left reports on a natural gas story of 2014 as reported in Tanzania's highly…

Dear Colleagues,

The World Bank, the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and CCSI are pleased to invite you to join a brown bag lunch discussion on June 13 in New York City, USA, about the changes, opportunities and challenges we are most likely to be…

"Little Shop"​ in Kabwe - photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Store_in_kabwe.jpg

Kabwe is the capital of…

Stakeholder Listening Exercise; February/ March 2017 Daniel Gilbert – Independent Mining & Metals Researcher

Introduction

This article reports on the introduction of Trimble's Landfolio for Natural Resources (Landfolio) implementation in Malawi; the policy context for that product’s introduction; and stakeholder views therein.

Landfolio

In many cases, this…

I am pleased to share unlocked (for about 2 weeks +) content from Barron's US Edition, below; after this time period the content will revert to subscriber only, so do read it now.

The article is by my good friend and very able journalist, researcher and responsible mining expert, Joseph Kirschke. He quotes examples from Cambodia, South Africa, Chile, Botswana, Burkina Faso and Brazil;…

Nowruz Mubarak! (for Monday, Mar 21, 2016,).  For the uninitiated, that means Happy Persian New Year (Nowruz)! and this coming Monday is the United Nations-recognised International Day of Nowruz.

It has been far too long since I have spent Spring or Summer in a part of the world where Nowruz is widely celebrated; the Summer of 2010, to be precise, when I was in Dushanbe and the western provinces of Tajikistan.  That trip took me to the grand Nurek Dam, the second tallest man-made dam…

How times change.  From the summer of 2002 to that of 2007, Anglo American PLC’s share price marched upwards, with only minor and short-lived reverses, from about £8.36 at the start of August 2002 to £32.22 by June 8^th 2007, a rise of nearly 300% in less than five years.  Earlier this month it gained the unwanted notoriety of become the worst…

Twenty years before I got into the world of extractive industries governance I studied Economics at university (Edinburgh, UK).  Albeit not for very long: my Masters was in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) and I decided to major in Politics, so that amounted to four years of study, rather than the other ‘P’ or the ‘E’, which only got two years of study (all concurrently).  And, yes, I am that old. 

I mention this both in the context of…

Hi, Everyone

As a simple member of the GOXI community, please could I make the following request of everyone contributing to this forum:  please provide basic geographical information.  

Geographical context is vital if there is going to be any shared understanding, e.g. (& please note that these are made-up examples):

"The National Petroleum Commission said ...." leads to the obvious question: the National Petroleum Commission of which country?  Ditto the "National…

This report brings together the insights from my in-country research into Malawi's extractive industries conducted last Autumn over a five week period spanning much of September and October.

The full report is available here.

As such, the document forms part of the suite of Malawian extractives documents available via the …

As of the 1st August 2013 International Energy, Skills & Training Alliance (IESTA) will be no more, bar a LinkedIn Group.  I suspect that the response of most (all?) GOXIans to this news will be - never heard of IESTA, where have they been hiding?

I will be frank - and of course these are my personal thoughts, not those of my …

As I write this, today (Tuesday 25th June 2013) is Mozambique’s Independence Day, and its 38th Birthday as an independent nation.   Happy Birthday Mozambique.

My first awareness of this country was as a school child – Hugh, one of my “best friends” (kids have  many friends who all, somehow, are their “best friend”, as any parent will attest) was from Mozambique.   Hugh’s dad worked for Lonhro managing a big estate farm and he was sent to Bedales School, Hampshire, England – where I…

On the 8th March 2013, International Women's Day, the University of Dundee will host a public debate: 'Independence: a distraction or an opportunity for Scottish women?'

Members of the Scottih Parliament (MSPs) Shona Robison and Kezia Dugdale, and others, will examine the role that women will play in deciding the nation's future.  Both MSPs have kindly given interviews ahead of the debate to the University of Dundee-led …

Please see below the thoughts and reflections of three Ghanaian users of the project, The Extractive Industries Source Book - Source Book resources includes those relating to: the Ghanaian mining; and Ghanaian oil & gas sectors.

Korshie…

Oil is central to the polity of many nations; for example,  the industry in both Venezuela and Uganda have been the subject of recent, excellent, OpenOil/GOXI blogs.  However, this is equally true of  countries that are less blogged…

I am frankly amazed at the myopic perspective of some, but not all, oil and gas firms when it comes to corporate communications.  Myopic firms - and, yes, there seem to be quite a few of them - seem unable to look beyond crisis management responses communications issues.  Of course, these are important, but please wake up and smell the coffee - there is so much more, and so much more positive, things to focus on.

For instance:

1)      Community engagement – what are you doing…

Tajikistan, the central Asian state with a past history centred on the Silk Route and, more recently, as a member SSR of the Soviet Union, is a land of great opportunities for Minerals development but also one plagued by geopolitics.

Let's start with the minerals.

The Tajik Government states that:

“Mining and Minerals: Underneath Tajikistan's ever-present mountains lie a wide array of natural resources, many of which have not yet been exploited because of their…