Latest news with #Zama
The Citizen
23-05-2025
- The Citizen
KZN man killed in drive-by shooting: 26 spent AK-47 cartridges found
A 60-year-old man was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Dhalia Place in Isipingo, KZN, on Wednesday morning. Police spokesperson Constable Donald Naidoo confirmed that the shooting occurred just after 09:30, and responding officers found a white Toyota Fortuner crashed into a wall, riddled with bullet holes on the driver's side. South Coast Sun reports that the victim, identified by his son as Ramalingam Pillay, was found inside the vehicle with multiple gunshot wounds to his head and upper body. He was declared dead at the scene by PT Ambulance paramedics. Authorities recovered 26 spent AK-47 cartridges at the scene. It is believed Pillay was alone in the vehicle at the time. 'The motive behind this senseless killing is still unknown. We are urging anyone with information to come forward,' said Naidoo. The commander of the Isipingo Police Station, Colonel Hensford Musa Zama, visited the scene and condemned the violence. He assured the community that police are committed to solving the case. 'No one deserves to die in this way. We will leave no stone unturned,' said Zama. Anyone with information related to the incident is urged to contact Zama on 082 418 0042 or Naidoo on 082 411 6351. Callers may remain anonymous. Breaking news at your fingertips… Follow Caxton Network News on Facebook and join our WhatsApp channel. Nuus wat saakmaak. Volg Caxton Netwerk-nuus op Facebook en sluit aan by ons WhatsApp-kanaal. Read original story on At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
The South African
21-05-2025
- The South African
Police apprehend 362 Zama zama nationwide
On 21 May 2025, the South African Police Service revealed that they had arrested 362 suspected Zama zama across the country, in the past week. The suspects were arrested during the nationwide Operation Vala Umgodi. During the nationwide operation, police seized four unlicensed firearms and 91 rounds of ammunition collectively. Police in KwaZulu- Natal also recovered vehicle parts that belong to a car that was reportedly hijacked near eMpangeni. 'These suspects were arrested for illegal mining related offences and various other crimes that include, among others; attempted murder, possession of an unlicensed firearm and possession of drugs' said SAPS spokesperson, Colonel Amanda van Wyk. During the operation, police destroyed equipment they found at the various crime scenes. SAPS said they believe the equipment was used for illegal mining. According to van Wyk, the illegal mining equipment that was destroyed included phendukas [a cylindrical machine turned by hand and used to process gold ore], phenduka pots, gas bottles and generators. She said the items were seized from suspects in different parts of Ekurhuleni District. The police also seized 21 vehicles that include TLB's, trucks, bakkies and sedans in different parts of the country. An excavator was also found at one of the scenes and it was confiscated by the police. SAPS said they received a tip-off in the Northern Cape and were led to two suspects in Port Nolloth. The pair were found with unpolished diamonds in their possession. According to SAPS, in a separate incident, six suspects were arrested in the Free State after being caught partaking in illegal mining. van Wyk said an additional 12 suspects were arrested in Limpopo while another 15 alleged illegal miners were arrested in Baberton, Mpumalanga. Equipment seized during Operation Vala Umgodi. Picture supplied by SAPS 'Community members are reminded that illegal mining is a criminal activity that is a contravention of the country's laws and forms part of many other economic related crimes that are afflicting our society', van Wyk concluded. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
Reuters
14-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: Mexican tycoon Slim eyes two of Pemex's key fields, gaining clout in energy sector
MEXICO CITY, March 14 (Reuters) - Mexican state energy company Pemex is in talks with Carlos Slim which could see the billionaire tycoon help bankroll two of the country's most promising crude oil and natural gas fields, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The negotiations, which have not been previously reported, indicate Slim's growing clout in Mexico's struggling energy sector, expanding his business empire which already spans telecommunications, banking, insurance, retail and hospitality. The Reuters Power Up newsletter provides everything you need to know about the global energy industry. Sign up here. Slim, one of the world's richest people, has built close relations with the leftist government and avoided the public clashes that occasionally broke out between former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and big business. Talos Mexico, in which Slim is a majority investor, Harbour Energy, and Pemex are in advanced discussions to jointly operate Zama, a deepwater project in the Gulf of Mexico, a senior government source said. The tycoon is also a eyeing participation in the country's most important onshore natural gas field, Ixachi, the government source and two other sources said. While Pemex is the current operator of Zama, which has yet to start producing, the source said talks were leaning towards a joint operating agreement, meaning Pemex would cede some control - a rare model for the state company. Pemex owns 50.43% of Zama while Talos Mexico and Harbour Energy own 17.4% and 32.2% respectively. Pemex did not respond to a request for comment, while Grupo Carso - through which Slim owns the stake in Talos Mexico - declined to comment. Linda Cook, the company's CEO, said last week on call with investors that there would likely be changes to the way Zama is operated, without giving details. Harbour Energy referred Reuters to Cook's comments in response to questions about the talks. Grupo Carso would contribute the much-needed capital, the source said, adding "only minor details" still needed to be agreed. The funding would come through Talos Mexico, they added. The financial terms of the possible deal were not clear. It comes after a long-running feud over who would operate Zama between Pemex and a private consortium of companies led by Houston-based Talos Energy. Talos, which in 2017 discovered Zama's oil deposits in the first major discovery by a foreign company after a landmark energy reform, wanted to operate the deepwater Gulf of Mexico project, but Mexico's authorities gave Pemex the right instead. Talos has since sold down its position in Talos Mexico, which owns the stake Zama, selling 80% to Zamajal, a company owned 90% by Grupo Carso. KEY GAS FIELD Slim is also in early talks about investing in the country's most important gas discovery in more than a quarter of a century, Ixachi, in Veracruz state, said two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions and the government source. Its production is currently sent to the Papan plant, which was specifically built for it. Pemex has been contemplating building a second plant, of similar capacity, to help process up to 345 million cubic feet of gas per day, one of the sources said, with its cost running into nearly half a billion dollars. Papan sweetens and dehydrates the sour wet natural gas that comes to the surface at Ixachi, and then further conditions it to produce liquefied petroleum gas that is used in Mexico for heating and cooking. Grupo Carso and Ideal - a construction company also owned by Slim, expressed interest in financing the second plant, the source said. It could also involve an investment into the expansion of a separation battery, Perdiz, which gas from liquid hydrocarbons. Slim's participation in Ixachi would likely be under a so-called mixed contract, the government source added. Recently approved by Congress, mixed contracts allow Pemex to partner with private companies in exploration and production, so they can complement financing and expertise, while the state company retains ownership of the resources. President Claudia Sheinbaum has vowed to guard the legacy of her predecessor and mentor Lopez Obrador, a resource nationalist who strengthened Pemex at the expense of private companies. But Sheinbaum faces a tough reality, needing to keep the world's most indebted energy company afloat at a time when production has slumped to a four-decade low and new discoveries have largely disappointed. "Slim's upper hand is that he gets along with all governments," said Alexia Bautista, a former Mexican diplomat who now is the country's lead analyst for political risk consultancy Horizon Engage. "He knows how to cultivate relationships with all Mexican presidents, including with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with whom there were some frictions, and now with Claudia Sheinbaum, and then reap the benefits of it," Bautista said. Bautista said he has shown to be pragmatic - and more flexible than others in the sector. Last year, Slim and Pemex agreed to develop the country's first deepwater natural gas field, Lakach, which has been abandoned twice before because of high cost.
Wall Street Journal
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Suicides' Review: Antonio di Benedetto's Lost Souls
Though Argentina's cultural hub was in Buenos Aires, the writer Antonio di Benedetto (1922-1986) stayed for most of his life in his birth city of Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes mountains and some 650 miles from the capital. Di Benedetto was far from a recluse: He worked as a journalist and deputy director of a Mendoza newspaper; he wrote novels, short stories and screenplays; and he had a vocal admirer in the country's literary panjandrum Jorge Luis Borges. Even so, it's tempting to interpret his life on the outskirts as an act of self-imposed isolation. Di Benedetto's books are compact, existential allegories of estrangement and longing. They are about misanthropic yet disarmingly vulnerable men who are marooned on the periphery of society—'ready to go,' as one of them thinks, 'and not going.' Di Benedetto's provincial focus also meant that his intricate, original fiction went underappreciated in his lifetime. It fell to later Latin American writers, the most notable being Chile's Roberto Bolaño, to insist upon his place in the 20th-century canon. In a 1999 essay, the Argentine writer Juan José Saer suggested that three of Di Benedetto's novels—'Zama' (1956), 'The Silentiary' (1964) and 'The Suicides' (1969)—were so thematically similar that they could be considered a trilogy. Though there's no evidence that Di Benedetto contemplated such a thing, the idea stuck. Bringing out new translations of 'Zama' in 2016, 'The Silentiary' in 2022 and, now, 'The Suicides,' NYRB Classics has published this set as the Trilogy of Expectation. All three have been rendered into English with exceptional style and discernment by Esther Allen. Geography is most like destiny in 'Zama,' the story of a colonial administrator stationed in a remote backwater of Spain's South American empire at the close of the 18th century. Separated from his wife and children, Don Diego de Zama yearns for a favorable posting back to Buenos Aires, which never comes. Biding his time, he pursues a love affair with a great European-born lady, who also eludes him. Following Zama's slow-motion decline from lordly pomp to penury, Di Benedetto produces his most memorable character, a man as piteous as he is foolish, defeated by the world but in recompense granted an insight into the essential anticlimax of existence: 'Everything is possible, I saw, and in the end every possibility can be exhausted.' Another thwarted soul narrates 'The Silentiary,' which involves a blocked writer's attempt, sometime in the 1950s, to escape the noise of his nameless Latin American city. As he drags his family from lodging to lodging, hauling along a piano that no one is permitted to play, his doomed quest for silence acquires metaphysical overtones, becoming a search for some idealized place 'where everyone sleeps at night.' As in 'Zama,' the story grows increasingly surreal (dreams are prominent in all of Di Benedetto's books), though the writing remains formal and dignified.
Reuters
31-01-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: Mexico's Pemex, billionaire Slim renegotiate deepwater gas project
MEXICO CITY, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire investor Carlos Slim's team and state energy company Pemex are discussing substantial changes to a deal to develop the country's first deepwater natural gas field, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Slim's Mexican holding company Grupo Carso ( opens new tab signed a deal last year to partner with Pemex to develop the Lakach field in the Gulf of Mexico, seeking to revive a project the state company had abandoned twice due to high costs. Since then, Mexico's relationship with the U.S. has come under increased strain from U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of tariffs, mass deportations and military strikes on cartels. In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's government has redoubled its efforts, which began under her predecessor during the first Trump presidency, to wean the country off gas imports from the United States. Representatives of Pemex and Grupo Carso have discussed different schemes to make Lakach profitable, at a lower gas price than they had initially projected, the sources said. Grupo Carso wants to add two nearby fields with similar expected resources, Piklis and Kunah, to increase the potential profitability of the venture, four of the sources said. It was unclear how much the addition of the two fields, which two sources said was close to being finalized, would raise the price for an investment that sources said would earn Slim substantial political clout. Pemex did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Slim declined to comment. The sources asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly on the issue. In recent years, Slim has been increasing his investments in the energy sector, with stakes in shallow-water fields Zama, Ichalkil and Pokoch. Piklis and Kunah, each of which has two wells drilled, were declared strategic priorities by Sheinbaum's government last year as Pemex aims to increase overall gas production to 5 billion cubic feet per day (cfd), up from around 3.7 billion cfd. Slim's team also floated the possibility of putting the venture on ice or pulling out, three sources said, in what one of them added was a negotiation strategy for a better deal. Earlier development plans for the field were for a startup in 2026 and a relatively short production span of eight years, according to official records. That timeline looks unlikely, the sources said. The field, located some 90 kilometers (56 miles) from the Gulf port of Veracruz, holds an estimated 900 billion cubic feet of gas. Lakach needs a lot more investment, added another source, who reviewed development plans. Pressure is low at the existing well there, making production a challenge. Another seven wells drilled since 2007 were abandoned because they did not produce any gas, official records show. So far, Pemex has spent $1.4 billion on it and was authorized by the regulator to spend another $400 million. A fall in gas prices has added to the challenge of making the investment profitable. The benchmark Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price is about $3 per million Btu, down about a third from a year ago and well below the $6 per million Btu initially assumed for the project, one of the sources said. DEEP FREEZE Apart from the prospect of Trump's comeback reshaping ties between the two neighbors, Mexico has other reasons to seek energy independence. Supplies from the north have been disrupted. In 2021, energy outages in Texas caused by a deep freeze extended for a week. Republican Governor Greg Abbott directed its natural gas providers not to ship outside the state. Exports of gas to Mexico via pipeline fell by about 75%. But developing Mexico's own resources is not straightforward. Pemex wants to develop the offshore field using a service contract where partners finance projects upfront, a mechanism used prior to the country's energy sector liberalization, which was curtailed by Sheinbaum's resource nationalist predecessor. Developing Lakach will require both resources and expertise from private companies, whose participation the government has sought to limit in recent years. A lack of infrastructure to pipe the gas away is another issue, the sources said. Plans to produce gas from the field were first shelved in 2016, and then again after previous partner New Fortress Energy pulled out in 2023.
