The Oil and Gas business has long relied on Africa Oil Week. Allegations of a large sum of money from the Dubai Expo prompted them to leave Cape Town for Dubai. To justify their actions, they cited Covid.
As an ambitious move, the African Energy Chamber, the continent’s unapologetically pro-oil lobby, chose the same dates from November 9 to 12 in Cape Town, South Africa, to conduct African Energy Week.
When I read about the charming and Trump-like character multi-millionaire oil lawyer, NJ Ayuk, who behaves like a country kid but is highly clever in his operations, I decided to attend African Energy Week. A Southern Baptist pastor with a tendency for going after opponents like Trump, he worked out how to convince oil and coal companies to pay him millions of dollars to lecture.
There are others in the audience that appreciate him for fighting back and taking no prisoners. Because I’ve heard so many good things about the African Energy Chamber, I wanted to test whether they could pull this off. My curiosity was piqued by the engine that powered them. That’s what happened when I traveled to Cape Town’s African Energy Week. There were a lot of joyful folks and cameras all over the place. Everyone was in high spirits as they waited in long lines to get tested for covid and hugged each other.
It’s not as simple as that, though.
- Look at the American participants at African Energy Week.
- Ryan Zinke served as Secretary of the Interior under President Trump until resigning. It’s not unusual for Zinke to hand out oil licenses like candy at Halloween.
- The former United States Congressman Scott Taylor, a former Navy SEAL,
- Founder and Chief Mercenary Officer of Blackwater, Erik Prince. Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy Devos’ brother.
- Ex-U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel Region of Africa under Trump, Peter Pham:
- Frank Fannon, former US Department of State Assistant Secretary of Energy Resources under Donald Trump
- Trump lobbyist and CEO of Stryk Global Diplomacy Robert Stryk has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration.
This year’s First African Energy Week was a resounding success. more impressive than anything in the United States. The quality of the information, as well as the design, was excellent. Mr. Ayuk, who intended to point the finger at someone else in the event of something going wrong, received a gift in the form of white activists who were against Africans exploiting fossil fuels.
Many African Ministers opened the summit with strong statements in favor of fossil fuels. Mr. Ayuk’s usual opening salvo was used here. Despite his exhaustion, Ayuk appeared ready to deliver a sermon to a room full of diehard evangelicals.
This oil and gas expo was attended by many, and he stood on the pulpit with his trademark red tie in his dark-blue suit, a white shirt, and white cufflinks. For Ayuk, he appeared to be restricted, perhaps even bound. Despite his apprehension about the situation, he remained calm and focused on the task at hand. Who would have predicted a few years ago that NJ Ayuk would be preaching Oil and Gas and praising capitalism in Cape Town and ranting against development aid by liberals?” one witness said.
Across ideological boundaries, political operators and wheeler-dealers work together in the American twilight zone of political chicanery. In this case, Trump officials penetrated the African Energy Chamber and aided it in its enormous takedown of Africa Oil Week. This is a great example of how experienced troublemakers may put aside their differences to harass a common target whenever their interests align.
The London edition of Africa Oil Week has gone green, helping to shape a European perspective on Africa’s reliance on oil. Ayuk, the Chamber, and the Trumpers are all oil people. The Trumpers decided to utilize Ayuk and the African Energy Week to go into Africa and send a message to COP26 and the West by using Ayuk and the African Energy Week. A strong partnership between the flamboyant African oil tycoon and Trump officials, fundraisers, and consultants makes perfect sense.
Whatever the rationale, Trump officials are doing the Republican party a service by supporting and promoting Ayuk. Right-leaning observers have enthusiastically anticipated that Ayuk will pose “a huge challenge” to the left and Africa Oil Week since he launched African Energy Week. Oil and gas publicity is still seductive to Ayuk; he is also motivated by the potential to replace and point the finger at erstwhile French colleagues who betrayed and wounded him. You can tell just by listening to him speak that he has aspirations to reshape the African oil business in the image of his mentor and close friend Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima. When it comes to promoting oil and gas, these two are deadly. Forget about their green rhetoric. Green energy is a pet peeve of theirs. In Equatorial Guinea, Gabriel Obiang was unable to cite a single green initiative.
As a Washington lobbyist and a close friend of Ayuk’s, Robert Stryk’s participation in the African Energy Week demonstrates the extent to which Trump officials are influencing the African Energy Chamber and its agenda. Their importance cannot be overstated. African Energy Chamber’s message, money, and staffing were all helped by these people. Take a look at how the Chamber handled the run-up to Africa Oil Week’s confrontation with conferences. It was a classic case of political polarisation in the United States.
Ayuk said that polarisation is beneficial if it means defending Africa’s oil and gas resources. He traveled to Glasgow and unleashed his fury on environmentalists. The message “Making Energy Poverty a Thing of the Past” was his. Oil extremists stated it was their reaction to climate activists during the conference, and Frank Fannon praised it as “great branding.” Renewable energy was relegated to the conference’s final day due to advice from Trump administration officials.
We need to know why the African Energy Chamber has emerged as a contender in Africa’s fight against energy poverty and the oil sector. Simple, but extremely troubling: only Mr. Ayuk and the African Energy Chamber had the guts and fortitude to speak up. They were the only ones. As with many other instances, he used his US legal training to gain millions of dollars by suing firms and extorting extra money from them with the support of African politicians like Gabriel Obiang. Ayuk was always ready whether African leaders were in crisis or a major conflict or a major deal had to be struck. Ayuk stepped up to the plate whenever Africans became enraged at the injustice of the West’s treatment of Africa in terms of climate change.
As if they were informing the oil business and Africans of anything they didn’t already know, climate activists and many liberals are eager to criticize Ayuk as an opportunist and publicity-seeking. Many oilmen and Africans in Cape Town would tell you that Africa and the oil industry need visibility and a chance to be heard urgently. At the very least, Ayuk and the Chamber and its Trump Bros took advantage of the attention and caused some controversy.
Many attendees will share anecdotes about how Ayuk stepped in to help them with legal or strategic advice and financial assistance, something they would never receive from the London-based Africa Oil Week or selfish liberals who just want to steal from Africa. Ayuk.
In 2022, Africa Oil Week will square off against Africa Energy Week for a rematch. I listened to a SABC interview with the organization’s Africa director Paul Sinclair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlqIRHnI DA Ayuk has no chance against him. The AEC squad of Ayuk is poised for the podium. It appears as though teleprompters are being used because the AEC crew is all smiling and appears to be well-trained to gaze at the camera angles, but this is not the case. They’re in good spirits and eager to take on the world. They’ve done a fantastic job of making these individuals media-aware, thanks to Robert Stryk, his staff, and Republican operatives. They resemble Fox News on a massive scale.
Paul Sinclair blatantly lied about 1500 people attending his Dubai conference, and I thought this was a gift to the slick operators at the African Energy Chamber who are compiling a list of Africa Oil Week missteps and will be ready to get into a dog fight and they fight hard and nasty. Because of this, I’m curious why Africa Oil Week is allowing Ayuk and the Chamber to frame the narrative with their usage of the term “energy poverty,” as Paul Sinclair has used it.
When asked why Ayuk can control such a large audience when there are better Africans, two former colleagues said they were upset. Still, one said they admired his courage in taking on challenging subjects but had little regard for his merciless approach toward anyone who crosses him. Audits of the Chamber and Centurion, according to some, are warranted. Ayuk allegedly sacked Glenda Benson, his lone white employee, during her maternity leave because she instructed him to follow Covid regulations. Glenda was a white lady.
Despite their admiration for the Chamber, another conference attendee refused to accept a job offer after hearing from a former employee, Mandisa Nduli, about how hectic working for the pro-oil lobby is. Ayuk agreed to meet with me for an interview. But he said he had to talk to protestors first, and that’s why he couldn’t sit down with me. The Chamber and I were both formed by the media; he remarked as he grinned. “You’d miss me if I didn’t exist.” “Dubai is dull, and there is nothing fresh to report,” you say. I constantly offer you something to write about. “Nonetheless.
I didn’t get the impression he was trying to avoid me since we never had a chance to chat. A number of individuals showed a real appreciation for his job, and he was busy and occupied. A gasoline jacket would be slung around their necks if they didn’t stop following him to hell, he said.
This happened when Ayuk appeared on the same South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). He talked about the numerous colors of green, called Africans “God’s children,” went into detail about Africa Oil Week Power List, and said that black women need a job and not a list because they are the last hired and first dismissed. You observed a clever lawyer get a textbook takedown or impeachment of an opponent with a smirk on their face. “
I saw pictures of the Dubai oil week conference on Linkedin, and they were mainly white men from London, largely consultants, discussing Africa with each other. After the first day of the Dubai conference, some attendees in Cape Town told me they decided to switch to Cape Town instead. The Trump-AEC anti-climate alliance had the support of every African oil producer, and Cape Town was abuzz.
Despite my hatred for the African Energy Chamber and Ayuk’s harmful views on energy transition, you have to give them some respect for their perseverance and discipline. At the Africa Oil Week, the climate activists and moderates let these oil junkies take the spotlight. Even though I’ve been a strong supporter of Africa Oil Week and even IN-VR, I have to admit that I was impressed by Ayuk’s performance in the discussions and his ability to articulate the African stance.
