Petrobras has signed production-sharing contracts for eight offshore Côte d’Ivoire blocks, one fewer than the nine areas the Ivorian government approved for exclusive negotiation in June 2025.

The contracts are a real change of state, but the disclosure stops at acreage and ownership. Petrobras has not published the financial terms, minimum exploration expenditure, well commitments or drilling timetable. Côte d’Ivoire has converted investor interest into petroleum rights. It has not yet disclosed the programme that will convert those rights into subsurface information.

That distinction matters because this is no longer a standalone African entry. Petrobras says it resumed activity on the continent in 2024. It has since expanded in São Tomé and Príncipe, acquired exposure in Namibia, entered negotiations over four blocks in Ghana’s Keta Basin on 21 August, and now secured eight operated Ivorian PSCs. Côte d’Ivoire strengthens the conclusion that Petrobras is rebuilding an African exploration portfolio rather than collecting disconnected positions.

The corporate driver is equally important. Petrobras expects oil production to peak at about 2.7 million barrels per day in 2028 and has allocated US$7.1 billion to exploration through 2030. The company explicitly frames new frontiers in Brazil and abroad as part of its reserve-replacement strategy. Chief Executive Magda Chambriard has also described the Ivorian acreage as having geological characteristics comparable with Brazilian sedimentary basins. That is Petrobras’s exploration thesis, not yet a geological result.

Uganda is committing capital at a different point in the petroleum chain. Its US$310 million Kampala Storage Terminal will hold 320 million litres, equivalent to roughly 40 days of current national petroleum consumption. The infrastructure is tangible. The utilisation case still has to prove itself.

Congo is intervening through regulation rather than capital. Its subcontracting regulator has ordered Glencore’s KCC and Mutanda operations to terminate relationships with 1,540 suppliers it considers legally ineligible. The affected businesses represent about 67% of the reviewed supplier population at KCC and 52% at Mutanda.

The strongest distinction across today’s edition is between institutional commitment and economic commitment. Côte d’Ivoire has eight executed contracts, but the spending programme is still invisible. Uganda has committed infrastructure capital, but the wider petroleum system remains partly unfinished. Congo has imposed procurement rules, but their operating cost is not yet known.

The next disclosures should show whether each intervention changes the underlying economics, rather than simply the architecture around them.

Petrobras Netherlands B.V., the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and PETROCI Holding signed production-sharing contracts in Abidjan on 17 September for offshore blocks CI-513, CI-600, CI-601, CI-602, CI-603, CI-605, CI-701 and CI-702.

Petrobras will operate each with a 90% interest, while PETROCI Holding retains 10%.

There is an important continuity point. In June 2025, Côte d’Ivoire approved Petrobras’s declaration of interest over nine offshore blocks and gave the company exclusivity to negotiate petroleum rights. Eight have now reached contract.

Petrobras has not explained what happened to the ninth area, so the difference should not yet be read as either a deliberate relinquishment or a failed negotiation.

Nor has Petrobras disclosed the financial terms, minimum spending obligations, seismic commitments or drilling schedule attached to the eight PSCs.

Execution changes the status of Petrobras’s Ivorian entry. The company has moved beyond exclusivity and negotiation into operated petroleum rights across a multi-block portfolio.

But acreage count alone is a poor measure of exploration commitment. The economic significance will depend on how much capital Petrobras is obliged or willing to deploy, how quickly it acquires and interprets seismic data, and when the first wells enter the programme.

The broader Ivorian context strengthens the exploration proposition without proving Petrobras’s acreage. Eni moved Baleine from discovery in 2021 to production in 2023, and Côte d’Ivoire’s government says the partners committed a further US$4 billion to Phase 3 in May, taking cumulative project investment to US$8.5 billion. Phase 3 is designed to lift production to 150,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of gas per day.

VAALCO has also restarted Baobab production in CI-40 and is advancing further development and exploration activity.

The more interesting story is now Petrobras itself.

Its African position has accumulated quickly. Petrobras says it resumed activity on the continent in 2024. In Namibia it acquired 42.5% of Block 2613 alongside TotalEnergies. In July it completed the acquisition of 75% and operatorship of São Tomé and Príncipe Block 3 from incumbent operator Oranto Petroleum, reducing Oranto from 90% to 15% and adding to interests Petrobras already held in the country. On 21 August, Ghana approved negotiations over four Keta Basin blocks.

Côte d’Ivoire now adds eight executed PSCs.

That gives the acreage a clearer corporate denominator. Petrobras is approaching a forecast production plateau while spending US$7.1 billion on exploration through 2030. Africa is becoming one place where it is buying optionality against the need for future reserve replacement.

But optionality becomes valuable only when capital follows it.

Côte d’Ivoire has moved Petrobras across the first threshold: it now has the legal right to deploy capital. The missing work programme will show how quickly it crosses the second.

Sources: Petrobras — Eight PSCs signed on 17 September | Petrobras — Nine blocks approved for negotiation in June 2025 | Petrobras — 2026-2030 Business Plan | Petrobras — Namibia acquisition | Petrobras — São Tomé Block 3 completion

Uganda has broken ground on the Kampala Storage Terminal at Namwabula in Mpigi District.

The Uganda National Oil Company project is expected to cost approximately $310 million and provide capacity for 320 million litres of refined petroleum products.

UNOC says Uganda currently consumes about 240 million litres of petrol, diesel, jet fuel and kerosene each month. The new terminal therefore represents roughly 40 days of current national demand.

It will supplement the existing 30 million-litre Jinja Storage Terminal and private-sector storage. A proposed 211 km multi-products pipeline would eventually connect KST to the planned Hoima refinery.

The denominator makes the scale clearer.

Uganda is not simply adding another storage depot. It is building strategic capacity equivalent to more than a month of national consumption in a landlocked market dependent on import corridors.

The terminal could also become part of the domestic petroleum system once Uganda begins producing crude and if the Hoima refinery and products pipeline are completed.

KST has two investment cases, and they should not be confused.

The first is resilience. Even without the refinery, additional storage can reduce exposure to interruptions along import corridors and provide commercial handling capacity for oil marketers.

The second is integration. If the refinery and 211 km pipeline arrive, KST becomes part of a domestic refinery-to-market logistics chain.

The first case matters because the second still carries schedule risk.

Infrastructure that works only when every adjoining project arrives on time is considerably riskier than infrastructure capable of earning its place independently. The test for KST is whether storage, handling and strategic-reserve economics justify US$310 million even before the wider petroleum system is complete.

Sources: UBC — Uganda breaks ground on US$310m Kampala storage terminal

The DRC’s Regulatory Authority for Subcontracting in the Private Sector has ordered Kamoto Copper Company and Mutanda Mining to terminate ongoing contracts with subcontractors it considers legally ineligible and remove them from their supplier databases.

Both operations are controlled by Glencore.

At KCC, ARSP reviewed 1,427 suppliers and service providers. It found 472 eligible and 955 ineligible, meaning about 67% of the reviewed population failed the eligibility test.

At Mutanda, 548 of 1,133 were eligible and 585 ineligible, or about 52%.

The totals reconcile to 1,540 affected businesses. KCC and Mutanda must also refrain from signing new contracts with them until their status is regularised and submit corrective action plans within 30 days.

The current primary public record comes from the regulator. Glencore had not published a response to the order in the company materials reviewed for this edition.

This is local-content law reaching directly into procurement at two large producing copper-cobalt mines.

The order should not be read as evidence that 1,540 commercial relationships will necessarily disappear permanently. ARSP expressly allows businesses to regularise their status, and the contracts will vary considerably in operational importance.

But the scale creates a real implementation question.

The most consequential number is the proportion, not the total.

If roughly two-thirds of KCC’s reviewed supplier population and more than half of Mutanda’s fail the regulator’s eligibility requirements, compliance cannot be treated merely as an administrative clean-up.

The operating question is whether eligible Congolese suppliers have sufficient technical capability, capacity and capital to replace affected contractors where regularisation does not occur.

That distinction is critical. Local-content policy is relatively easy to satisfy when it changes the ownership structure through which invoices pass. It becomes materially harder when enforcement changes who can actually perform specialised work at a mine.

KCC and Mutanda’s 30-day corrective plans should begin showing which kind of intervention this is.

Sources: ARSP — Decision No. 020/ARSP/DG/2026: ARSP orders KCC SA and MUMI SA to terminate contracts with ineligible subcontractors

Côte d’Ivoire: Petrobras’s contractual work programme. The important disclosures are minimum exploration expenditure, seismic obligations, committed wells and the first drilling timetable. Also watch whether the ninth block approved in 2025 reappears or has fallen out of the portfolio.

Uganda: KST procurement, funding and construction milestones, followed by decisions on the 211 km products pipeline and Hoima refinery. The commercial test is whether the terminal has a viable utilisation case independently of refinery completion.

DRC: KCC and Mutanda’s 30-day corrective plans, particularly how many suppliers regularise, how many contracts are ultimately terminated and whether specialist procurement is disrupted.

This section identifies listed companies with exposure to the commodities and jurisdictions covered above, so that readers can compare how the same country or sector development may affect different operators. It covers named participants in today's stories first, then other listed companies active in the same jurisdiction on the same commodity.

Exposure varies enormously in both size and directness, and several of the most important operators in these jurisdictions are private or state-owned and therefore absent. Inclusion is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Petrobras | PETR3/PETR4 | B3 / PBR, PBR.A | NYSE
Direct exposure through 90% operated interests in the eight new PSCs; work commitments and first drilling will determine how much exploration capital follows the acreage.

Eni | ENI | Borsa Italiana / E | NYSE
The principal Ivorian offshore development comparator through Baleine and further exploration discoveries; Baleine Phase 3 carries a US$4 billion investment programme according to the Ivorian government.

VAALCO Energy | EGY | NYSE / LSE
Producing exposure through its 27.4% interest in CI-40’s Baobab field, which restarted in June; 60% operated development exposure at Kossipo, where the FDP is expected in H1 2027; and 70% operated exploration exposure in CI-705.

TotalEnergies | TTE | Euronext Paris / NYSE
Operator of Tilenga and a major shareholder in EACOP; KST sits downstream of the petroleum system being built around Uganda’s first oil.

CNOOC Limited | 00883 | HKEX / 600938 | SSE
Operator of Kingfisher and direct upstream exposure to Uganda’s first-oil development.

UNOC, the developer of KST, is state owned and unlisted.

Glencore | GLEN | LSE
Direct exposure through KCC and Mutanda, the two operations subject to the ARSP order.

Ivanhoe Mines | IVN | TSX
Major DRC copper exposure through Kamoa-Kakula and an important comparator if subcontracting enforcement broadens beyond Glencore.

CMOC Group | 603993 | SSE / 3993 | HKEX
Large DRC copper-cobalt exposure through Tenke Fungurume and therefore materially exposed to any wider change in subcontracting enforcement.

Zijin Mining | 601899 | SSE / 2899 | HKEX
Material indirect DRC copper exposure through Kamoa-Kakula.