Mogadishu`s new “Oil Sheikhs” duo: Minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed and Abdullahi Haider, special adviser at the natural resources ministry
The new duo actors in Mogadishu`s Oil pipe-dream team: Jay Park (left) and Patrick Molliere (right)
Somalian Minister of Natural Resources Abdirizak Omar Mohamed has just set up his new oil team. On February 17, he officially appointed two foreign advisers who had already been working for his predecessor. They are Frenchman Patrick Mollière, head of Aldric Global of Singapore, and Canadian J. Jay Park of Norton Rose Canada. Mollière is now special adviser to the Somalian government on oil matters and Park legal adviser on oil matters. Mollière has been given four briefs: to facilitate negotiations with holders of prior rights with a view to signing new production sharing agreements in keeping with the petroleum law; to help the Commission of Petroleum & Mineral Resources (CPMR) and Somalia Petroleum Company (SPC), which is currently in the process of being set up, to find partners; to prepare a round of bidding as a prelude to the award of new production sharing agreements; to help the ministry of natural resources with any other task required.
Jay, on the other hand, must advise the government, the national resources ministry, the CPMR and the SPC, on all the legal aspects of petroleum questions.
The principal Western embassies in Nairobi were informed immediately of these appointments, which were also notified by email to oil companies interested in Somalia. As they did for the preceding government, the two Westerners will work with three Somalis: Abdullahi Haider, special adviser at the natural resources ministry, Hussein Ahmed, managing director of SPC, and Mohamud Olow, ambassador In Indonesia.