The Data Room

Craig Steinke is a founder and majority shareholder of ReconAfrica and polo patron.

Steinke’s private company R2 Energy renamed itself Renaissance Oil in 2014 and became a publicly traded company. Renaissance then purchased several fracking-based assets in Mexico which  Steinke told investors was a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’. The Mexican government banned fracking in 2020 making Renaissance Oil’s frack assets worthless.

During all of Steinke’s other global frack ventures, he founded ReconAfrica in 2013, apparently  with the goal of bringing fracking to Namibia. The initial groundwork of acquiring PEL no. 73 from the Namibian government was done between 2013 and 2015, but due to the collapse of oil prices in 2015, Steinke shelved his Namibia frack project until 2018 possibly because  the price of oil began to rebound.

After the Mexican government banned fracking in 2020, Renaissance Oil (of which Craig Steinke is the CEO) purchased a 50% farm-in agreement with ReconAfrica (of which Craig Steinke is the founder and majority shareholder) within ReconAfrica’s Botswana PEL lease area — in Botswana but adjacent to the Kavango in northeast Namibia. In April 2021, near the peak of ReconAfrica’s stock price, ReconAfrica bought Renaissance Oil via a farm-out deal which enriched company founder Craig Steinke at the expense of stockholders, who were told the deal’s main asset now was the Botswana property, which Steinke had held in a shell company based in Washington state.  Both companies were publicly traded at the time.

When ReconAfrica submitted its Letter of Intent (LOI) to acquire Renaissance Oil, it did so for equity at a ratio of 1 Renaissance share for 0.046 ReconAfrica shares — transforming Steinke’s 30 million low-priced Renaissance Oil shares into 1.38 million high-priced ReconAfrica shares. This effectively increased Steinke’s worth by some 10.5 million Canadian dollars at the time of transaction without Renaissance Oil ever drilling an actual well.

 Sedar filing August 2019 ttps://www.sedar.com/GetFile.do?lang=EN&docClass=4&issuerNo=00008235&issuerType=03&projectNo=02964097&docId=4587023

This post is from a detailed complaint we wrote in 2022 https://savingokavangosuniquelife.blog/2025/01/22/complaint-about-reconafricas-to-the-royal-canadian-mounted-police/