Ethelbert Cooper has been active in the African natural resources sector for over thirty years.
During the 1980s, Mr Cooper was successively involved in a series of projects that were all related to the indigenisation of Liberia’s largest industrial project – the LAMCO iron ore mining venture established in the 1960s with a US $600 million capital investment. His specific activities in this regard included initiating and leading complex negotiations which culminated in the friendly transfer of the 25% stake of America’s Bethlehem Steel Corporation in the LAMCO project to a special-purpose national company (LIMINCO), and the ultimate assumption by LIMINCO of total ownership and management control of the same project from a subsidiary of Sweden’s Electrolux group; plus the successful implementation of related iron ore marketing, ore-for-equity swap and financing arrangements.
More recently, Mr Cooper, who is a resident of Switzerland, was the principal founder of Afren plc, a London Stock Exchange FTSE 250-listed pan-African oil and gas exploration and production company with a recent market capitalization of just under US$3 billion. Starting from modest beginnings in 2005, Afren today owns a diversified portfolio of 30 assets spread across twelve countries in West, Central and East Africa, and the Middle East, and is on track to achieve production of 50,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of 2011. Among Afren’s prospective undeveloped assets is a 45% stake in Block OML 26 onshore Nigeria, acquired in 2010 by Afren’s local subsidiary from Shell, Total and AGIP, as the pioneering initial step in a high-profile Nigerian indigenisation strategy being pursued by these oil majors. Today, Mr Cooper continues to play an important role in guiding these activities as a Strategic Adviser to Afren.
He also founded African LNG Holdings Limited, now owned by London-listed Gasol Plc, and he continues as Special Adviser to Gasol’s Board. In addition, Mr Cooper founded and advises a newly-established Swiss mutual fund styled as the African Energy Resources Fund.
Mr Cooper is a founding member and Chairman of the Liberian International Development Foundation. He is a founder and director of the US-based African African-American Foundation. Mr Cooper is also a member of the Advisory Board of the WEB Du Bois Institute of African Studies at Harvard University. Ethelbert Cooper received a B.A. in Economics from Yale University in 1974.
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