Royal Dutch Shell has offered to acquire Cove Energy for approximately 992 million pounds, the equivalent of more than 1.6 billion U.S. dollars. In other words, the European energy giant is offering 195 pence per every share it buys.

Cove Energy, an oil exploration company has been eyed for quite some time now by those in the market.

The company posted itself up for sale on January 4th shortly after it reported a tremendous reserve of gas off of the coast of the country of Mozambique.

Royal Dutch Shell finding little success in finding oil and gas off of Eastern African countries is now resorting to increasing its spending on exploration for the resources by about ~35 percent which would make the amount of money being spent about 5 billion U.S. dollars.

Now that Cove Energy, a company that has existed for less than 4 years with a 8.5% stake in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1, where already over 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas has been found, is up for sale, Shell is making its move.

In addition to the Mozambique area, Shell will be gaining stakes near Kenya and Tanzania if Cove Energy is acquired.

Meanwhile, Shell has been barely perturbed by serious allegations of its renewed abuse of human rights in Africa, particularly in the country of Nigeria.

In the past, Shell had been found guilty of countless, unreported oil spills that damaged local ecosystems.

Recently, WikiLeak’ed documents have shown that Royal Dutch Shell has been corrupting Nigerian government officials and inserting, essentially, spies in the local governments.

(Cover Photo: Ed O’Keeffe)