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Shell Makes Offer for East Africa-Focused Energy Firm

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Last updated on: February 21, 2012 7:00 PM

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has offered to buy Cove Energy, a firm with significant interests along the east coast of Africa.

Shell said in a statement Wednesday that it has offered more than $1.5 billion to purchase Cove, while Cove said its board would recommend the offer to shareholders.

Cove holds minority shares in oil and gas exploration projects in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya.

Two of its licenses are for the massive natural gas fields discovered last year off the coast of Mozambique.

Shell says its offer is conditioned on written approval from Mozambique's minister of mineral resources, Esperanca Bias.

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Boston Bomber Spent 6 Months in Russia’s Most Violent Republic

The news of the Boston Marathon bombings circled the globe, and resonated here in Dagestan, a majority Muslim republic in Russia, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers suspected of the bombings and a long-time Boston resident, returned to Dagestan, where he had lived for a year during his youth. Dagestan was the land of his maternal ancestors. But in the last two years, this republic of 3 million people has gained notoriety as the region with the highest level of political and religious violence in all of Russia. VOA's James Brooke reports from Makhachkala, Russia.