In the mafia-esque oil and gas industry, with its unwritten and understated Omerta, Tope Sonubi is a primus inter pares.
Because of his meteoric rise on the ladder of billions, many say he is the kind of guy that you give a rope and he automatically wants to become a cowboy. Obscenely wealthy, Tope is versed in the art of putting money to good use for the enjoyment and pampering of self and to the benefit and betterment of humanity.
However, his company, Sahara Group, recently moved into the Libyan oil trading sector.
According to our information, the group’s trading subsidiary, Sahara Energy Resources, which is based in the British Crown dependency of the Isle of Man, made its first delivery of Libyan oil to the United States during the summer. The 461,000 barrels of crude oil from Mellitah went to the Monroe Energy refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania.
The operation was financed by a letter of credit from Union des Banques Francaises et Arabes (UBAF), which is controlled by France’s Crédit Agricole but in which Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB), Banque Exterieure d’Algerie (BAE) and Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) also have stakes.
Sahara Group, which is more used to producing and exporting Nigerian oil and gas, has moved on to a Libyan market dominated by big operators. Libya’s National Oil Corp (NOC) and its subsidiaries, Italy’s ENI, France’s TOTSA, trading subsidiary of the Total group, and Spanish groups Repsol and CEPSA, are all very much involved in the Libyan market, as are the traders, Vitol and Glencore.
