The Prior Claim

Since June 2024, Senegal’s Sangomar oil field has produced approximately four billion dollars in sales. The state of Senegal has received under two hundred million. Woodside Energy, the Australian company holding 82 percent of the project, reported $2.6 billion in earnings from its Sangomar stake. Petrosen, the national oil company, received roughly six hundred million dollars — half of which is committed to repaying the debt it took on to acquire its 18 percent share.

These figures were disclosed by Alioune Gueye, the director general of Petrosen. His framing: “The company that provides the project financing takes the lion’s share.”

This is not a story about theft. The revenue split is the product of a production-sharing agreement working as designed.

The contract architecture predated the oil. Cairn Energy discovered Sangomar in November 2014, but the concession blocks and their terms were established years earlier, when oil was speculative and the exploration risk was real. The government of Senegal negotiated with a resource it did not yet have against capital it immediately needed. By the time Woodside acquired the majority position — consolidating stakes from Cairn, ConocoPhillips, and FAR Limited to reach 82 percent by 2021 — the structure was built.

Petrosen increased its equity from 10 to 18 percent in January 2020 by reimbursing co-venturers for their prior expenditure. The financing source for that reimbursement is not publicly documented. The consequence is: the national oil company borrowed to own a share of a field whose revenue terms were already set.

The production-sharing agreement’s specific terms are not public. The output is. Under the cost-recovery structure, the operator recovers its investment from production before any profit is split. Then the operator’s profit share is served. Then Petrosen’s equity share — of which half services debt. Then the state’s fiscal take: royalties, taxes, fees. Under two hundred million dollars from four billion in sales. The pipeline of prior claims is long. The state is at the end.

On the Grand Tortue Ahmeyim gas project — Senegal’s next major hydrocarbon development — Gueye projected twenty to forty billion dollars in revenue over twenty years. The state’s projected allocation: eight hundred million. The next resource is already committed to the same architecture.

The prior claims do not end at the wellhead.

The IMF estimated Senegal’s total public sector debt at 132 percent of GDP at the end of 2024. In 2026, debt service alone — 5.49 trillion CFA francs — will consume approximately seventy percent of state revenue. Senegal will spend more servicing its debt this year than on education, health, and infrastructure combined.

The debt was supposed to be smaller. In February 2025, Senegal’s Cour des Comptes published an audit revealing that the previous government had concealed approximately six to seven billion dollars in public debt over five years, from 2019 to 2023. The central government’s debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of 2023 was revised from 74.4 percent to 99.7 percent — a twenty-five percentage point gap that had been invisible in every official report for half a decade.

The concealment has a compounding cost. Bloomberg reported that 2026 debt service is eleven percent higher than previously projected, directly attributable to the hidden loans. The scandal did not create the debt architecture. It made the architecture larger and less legible. S&P downgraded Senegal to CCC+. The IMF suspended its $1.8 billion program.

The arithmetic that answers the question Sangomar was supposed to answer.

Senegal’s projected oil and gas revenue for 2026 through 2028, per the government’s own multi-year budget document: 227.2 billion CFA francs. Three-year debt service over the same period: approximately 14.9 trillion CFA francs.

The oil revenue covers 1.5 percent of the debt service. Not fifteen percent. One point five.

Sangomar exceeded its 2024 production target by forty-four percent — 16.9 million barrels against a projected 11.7 million. The field operates at near-perfect reliability. In 2025, it produced over 36 million barrels. The production is not the problem. The architecture through which the production reaches the state is the problem. The field works. The contract ensures the field’s success does not translate into the state’s solvency.

The IMF maintained continuous engagement with Senegal throughout the period the debt was being concealed. Between 2019 and 2024, the Fund conducted approximately fifteen formal Board-level engagements — program approvals, reviews, Article IV consultations — across four overlapping programs. The Policy Coordination Instrument ran from 2020 to 2023 with six completed reviews. A Stand-By Arrangement overlapped from 2021. The Extended Credit Facility was approved in June 2023. Each engagement assessed the fiscal position. None found the missing twenty-five percentage points of GDP.

The Bretton Woods Project noted that the concealment escaped detection “mission after mission, for five years.”

The Fund did not fail to evaluate. It evaluated what was presented. The gap existed in the public accounts the government controlled and the Fund relied upon. The IMF certifies what governments disclose. When the disclosure is the architecture of concealment, the certification becomes part of it.

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye was elected in March 2024 on a resource sovereignty platform. His government commissioned the audit that revealed the hidden debt. His Petrosen director general disclosed the revenue figures. The transparency is real. What it reveals is inherited.

The production-sharing terms were established before a barrel was produced. The sovereign debt was accumulated before the revenue began. The hidden debt was concealed while the contracts were being executed. The IMF certified the fiscal position across five years while a quarter of GDP was missing from the accounts.

The oil exists. The production exceeds projections. The field runs at near-perfect reliability. The revenue flows through an architecture of prior claims — cost recovery, operator profit, equity debt, sovereign debt, hidden debt — each established before or during the period when the resource was being developed. By the time a barrel’s worth reaches the state’s account, the claims have been served.

The prior claim was not built against Senegal’s oil. It was built into the agreements that made the oil extractable. The state signed each one. The IMF certified each round. The prior claim was first.

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