San Leon’s seismic surveys will be conducted in the northern parts of occupied Western Sahara from July 2011, in violation of international law. Placements from investor George Soros might have been crucial.
The Irish and UK oil firms San Leon and Longreach have announced that seismic studies will be conducted in Western Sahara from July 2011. The study will consist of 600 kilometer seismic studies on each of the Tarfaya and the Zag licences. Both blocks are mostly located in occupied Western Sahara, and the oil search takes place in violation of international law.
The contract is awarded to Novaseis, a newly established San Leon-owned seismic services firm. Novaseis, Warsaw based, is a 100% subsidiary of the Dutch company Island Oil and Gas B.V, the latter acquired by San Leon during its takeover of their Irish partner Island Oil and Gas last year.
“We have found an appropriate solution to the high costs quoted for carrying out our planned seismic acquisition programmes. [...] Novaseis will carry out its first operations in Morocco before returning to Poland, where we expect increased countrywide exploration activity to tighten availability of acquisition services and increase costs”, stated San Leon in their 2010 Final Audited report, published 29 June 2011.
San Leon expects Novaseis later to become a “standalone profit-making subsidiary that will primarily offer services to the San Leon Group as we develop our Polish assets quickly and provide services to third parties when there is spare capacity”, according to the report.
Pointing to Poland
It appears to be San Leon’s presence in Poland that contributed to the financing of this year's controversial Western Sahara exploration programme to begin with. The Irish firm holds rights in six licences in Poland, three of them located on a much mentioned Baltic Basin region in North Poland. This basin might be the reason why investor George Soros ended up on the ownership side of the firm that undertakes highly unethical oil exploration in occupied Western Sahara.
In 2010, the firms San Leon, Island and Longreach undertook a major restructuring of the group. At the same time, a hedge fund of the US multibillionaire George Soros caught interest in the geology of Poland, where the group had a stronghold.
And the interest in Poland could be well explained. According to a recent report by the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy, Poland has 5.3 trillion cubic meters of shale natural gas, equal to more than 300 years of the country’s annual gas consumption. This is the largest amount of shale gas for any European state in a study of 32 countries, according to the agency.
The Soros fund purchased shares in one after the other of the minor firms exploring the shale gas region in the northern parts of Poland. The Soros investments were done via Quantum Partners LP, a subsidiary of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management. During the autumn of 2010, Quantum made the following investments:
The following overview enlists stock-exchange registered companies currently operating in Western Sahara. Updated 30 April 2024.
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