Marreveshja Frontera.
Si nje kompani nafte e Teksasit dhe qeveria e Gjeorgjise, gjeten terren te perbashket ne Uashington.
Nje hetim mbi....
rrjetin e lobimit qe....
bllokoi sanksionet e SHBA-se,kunder Gjeorgjise.
In the spring of 2024, the Republic of Georgia's parliament passed what became known internationally as the "Agent Law" - legislation requiring organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents," a classification many Georgians associated with Soviet-era repression.
The law drew tens of thousands of protesters to the streets of Tbilisi, the country's capital. The government of Georgian Dream - the ruling party founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili - deployed force against demonstrators and kept the law in place.
Georgia, a country of roughly 3.7 million people in the South Caucasus, had for three decades sought closer ties with the United States and the European Union as a counterweight to neighboring Russian influence. The 2024 protests marked a turning point in how Washington assessed that relationship. In response, the U.S. Congress introduced the MEGOBARI Act. (The word "megobari" means "friend" in Georgian.)
The bill, passed the House of Representatives in May 2025 by a vote of 349 to 42 and moved to the Senate, included provisions freezing the financial assets of Georgian officials and imposing potential visa restrictions. It also offered incentives - visa-free travel for Georgians, trade benefits, and strengthened defense cooperation - conditional on the Georgian government returning to a democratic path.
The bill never became law - It was blocked in the Senate in September 2025 and again in December 2025. According to reporting by the American publication The Hill, both times the bill was stopped by Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the behest of then-Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma - the same senator who, in 2020, had called Georgian Dream' founder Ivanishvili a "Russian school oligarch" and "Putin ally," and demanded harsh U.S. action against the Georgian government.
What changed in those five years and who was at the center of that shift?
The connecting figure is=== Steve Nikandros, a Texas-based oil executive and founder of Frontera Resources Corporation.
Federal Election Commission records cited by the British outlet Open Democracy show that between 2017 and 2020, Nikandros donated a total of $73,450 to 16 U.S. congressmen and senators. Among those recipients was Senator Mullin, who received $9,000 from Nikandros in the 2019-2020 election cycle.(Mullin resigned from the Senate when he was appointed Secretary of Homeland Security in March 2026.)
During the same period, Nikandros paid $850,000 to Cornerstone Government Affairs/CGA, a Washington lobbying firm, for work on exploration and production issues in Eastern Europe. The senators and representatives who received his donations subsequently lobbied for Frontera's interests
In February 2019, Mullin introduced the "Georgia Fair Business Practices Sanctions Act," which would have imposed sanctions on Georgian officials deemed to be obstructing American business. In January 2020, Mullin and several other legislators sent open letters to the Georgian government accusing it of suppressing American commercial interests. The American business in question was Frontera, which had just lost an international arbitration case.
Frontera Promises But Doesn’t Deliver
To understand why Nikandros needed lobbying support in 2020 and why, in 2025, he was in a position to offer something in return, the story begins in 1997.
Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation arrived in Georgia that year, registering a local entity called Frontera Eastern Georgia LLC, which obtained a 25-year license to explore and extract oil and gas on a territory called Block 12, located in the Kakheti and Kvemo Kartli regions in eastern Georgia. The ownership structure was a 50-50 partnership between the American company and a Georgian government entity - initially the government company Saknavtob, and since 2014 by the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation, a government-owned enterprise that remains a major player in Georgia's energy sector.
Between 1997 and 2020, Frontera registered five additional companies in Georgia. The company states that over that period it invested $580 million in Georgia and extracted and sold oil and gas worth $60 million. It lists achievements as 3-D seismic research, the drilling of up to 60 wells, a listing on London's AIM stock exchange in 2004, and the construction of Georgia's first domestic gas pipeline.
The gap between those claims and the company's actual record of meeting contractual obligations eventually fled to international arbitration. Under the 1997 contract, Frontera was required to discover commercially viable reserves within 10 years. It did not do so and repeatedly requested extensions. In 2015 and 2016, Nikandros publicly announced that the company had discovered between 3.8 and 5 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves in Kakheti - a find that, if confirmed, would have made Georgia a meaningful regional energy producer.
The company was unable to present documentation supporting those claims to the Georgian state. Beginning in 2017, the company also delayed or failed to pay employee salaries. In late 2019, Frontera dismissed all 84 workers who had gone on a strike.
On January 15, 2018, the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation had already initiated proceedings against Frontera before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
On April 17, 2020, the Hague tribunal ruled that Frontera had substantially violated the Production Sharing Contract. The company was ordered to return 99% of the exploration territory to the Georgian government, and pay $6 million to cover process costs and taxes. The tribunal further found that Fronter’s claims about colossal gas reserves were not supported by documentation.
Under the terms of the ruling, the Georgian government had the legal right to terminate the contract entirely. It did not do so. Instead, the government allowed Frontera to continue operating on 1% of its original licensed territory - the so-called exploitation area, where oil low-volume extraction had been ongoing since the Soviet period.
The government stated publicly that this concession was made to preserve Georgia's reputation as a predictable investment environment and to maintain its relationship with the United States, its most important strategic partner at the time.
Frontera framed the arbitration result as evidence of Georgia's democratic regression and an attempt to suppress American business.
The post-arbitration period produced two further legal episodes that each followed a similar pattern: a process that appeared to move against Frontera's interests, followed by intervention from Georgian state institutions.
The first concerns a company called Green Capital LLC, registered in Georgia in 2017 and linked through ownership to the family of Zaza Mamulaishvili, who has served as director of Frontera's Georgian branch since the company's founding. Otar Urushadze, sole owner and director of "Green Capital" since 2018, also heads LLC "Stream Georgia," owned by Zaza Mamulaishvili's daughter, Manana Mamulaishvili.
According to Mamulaishvili, in 2013, when Frontera Eastern Georgia faced significant financial losses, Green Capital provided millions of dollars in investment. On April 25, 2018, a crude oil purchase contract was signed between Green Capital and one of Frontera's branches. Frontera received $5.8 million from Green Capital but did not deliver the contracted crude oil.
Green Capital sued. On March 31, 2021, Tbilisi City Court ruled in its favor, awarding Green Capital exclusive rights to oil operations across several eastern Georgian regions, a $5.8 million judgment against the American Frontera, and a transfer of Frontera's 50% share in Frontera Eastern Georgia LLC to Green Capital.
Less than three weeks later, on April 20, 2021, the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation intervened and requested cancellation of that ruling. The court agreed. Within a week, Green Capital's shares in Frontera Eastern Georgia were seized; on May 21, the company was prohibited from disposing of any property. Green Capital's appeal to the Court of Appeals was unsuccessful.
The second episode began on August 18, 2021, when the Bank of Georgia filed a petition with Tbilisi City Court to initiate bankruptcy proceedings against Frontera's Georgian branch. In October, the court approved the petition, appointed a temporary bankruptcy administrator, and stripped the company's directors and owners of management rights.
On October 20, the Oil and Gas Corporation and the Georgian Oil and Gas State Agency jointly appealed the bankruptcy ruling. After procedural steps, a November 22 ruling determined that Frontera's Georgian branch was not an independent legal entity and could not be bankrupted separately, because its Cayman Islands parent company was already in liquidation. The bankruptcy process was halted, and the court fee paid by the Bank of Georgia was refunded.
Frontera lost the arbitration on paper, but in practice, it walked away with the better end of the deal. The Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation's 2024 annual financial report states that Frontera owed it 15.4 million Georgian lari (about $US5.6 million) and that collection is not possible because the company is in a liquidation process and has no assets. The Corporation stated it was not recording the sum as a receivable on its balance sheet. It noted that Frontera's legal successors were given until August 30, 2024, to pay, but did not do so.
When reporters contacted the National Enforcement Bureau- the Georgian government body responsible for executing court-ordered financial claims - to ask whether the arbitration-mandated $6 million had been collected, the bureau declined to provide information, claiming that enforcement proceedings are not part of the public record.
Journalists traveled to the Dedoplistskaro village of Patardzeuli to determine whether Frontera remained operational in the field. At the Taribani field, representatives of the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation confirmed that Frontera was no longer present and that the government company had taken over. "This is state property. Frontera used to work here, but it's been several years since they left," a representative said, adding that he had no authorization to share further information or permit entry. At the Mirzaani field, the same: Frontera had departed, leaving a year's worth of unpaid debts. "It took a year's debt and left," one Oil and Gas Corporation employee said.
The Deal That Closed in Washington
By the end of 2025, Frontera and the Georgian Dream government - once public adversaries --found a convergence of interests. Georgian Dream faced the prospect of sanctions under the MEGOBARI Act. Nikandros, in correspondence with U.S. senators, including Mullin, argued that passage of the MEGOBARI Act would damage what he called TXN Energy's planned $100 million investment in Georgia over two years, and asked that the senators block the legislation.
No documentation confirming the planned investment has been made public. The Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation has not announced that it has issued TXN Energy a license to explore or produce oil in Georgia.
TXN Energy is registered in Houston, Texas, with the same legal address as Frontera. According to the London-based outlet reporter.London, which investigated the company in November 2025, TXN’s website showed the same oil fields shown on its website as those on Frontera’s.
The lobbying effort produced results. The MEGOBARI Act was blocked in September 2025 and again in December 2025. The Georgian Dream received protection from sanctions. Frontera-linked entities exited Georgia without paying their documented debts in full.
While working on this investigation, the reporting team sent written questions to Zaza Mamulaishvili, Green Capital LLC, the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation, and the Georgian Oil and Gas State Agency. Questions were also sent to Frontera Eastern Georgia's official email address, as direct contact with Steve Nikandros was not made. Mamulaishvili did not respond to calls or written questions. No other party contacted for comment has responded.
HULUMTIMI mbaron....
Kush i autorizoi leshimet e bera ndaj Fronteres pas.....
vendimit te arbitrazhit ne vitin 2020 dhe.....
mbi çfare BAZASH u moren keto vendime,mbetet e pashpjeguar.
28 Maj 2026.
08:21.
Leximi 9 minuta.
FAKTI.