Issue 222 - 16 December 2011
Dear Goodluck, Please surprise us with a PIB that rebuilds NNPC
Will 2012 be the year when malfunctioning giant Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is restructured as the cornerstone of an all-embracing overhaul of financing, licensing, regulation and operations in the Nigerian hydrocarbons industry? Co-ordinating minister of the economy and finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala believes a workable Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) can be drawn up to be re-presented to the National Assembly “soon” (AE 217/1). But “soon” in Nigerian parlance too usually means “we don’t know when” and, although President Goodluck Jonathan’s 13 December budget speech contained another call for official bodies and industry stakeholders to bring closure to the PIB (the first draft of which appeared in 2008), he did not say when and how. (Jonathan also failed to mention efforts to tackle the fuel subsidy, whose eradication is supposed to be another cornerstone of the Nigerian reform team’s platform.)
more
Issue 221 - 2 December 2011
African politics should not be left to the politicians
News that Grammy award-winning Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour is formally entering politics may come as a blow to his many fans but seems like good news for Senegal’s political scene. While N’Dour has not said he will run for president next February, he is keen to step up the challenge to the status quo. President Abdoulaye Wade, officially 85 but possibly older, spent a lifetime in opposition before winning elections in 2000 and shows no inclination to step down now, while his opponents in the Parti Socialiste, the former single party, do not represent an attractive alternative, and N’Dour could offer Senegal a way of moving on from the bipolar politics of the post-independence era.
more
Issue 220 - 18 November 2011
Exploration failure, election violence: Liberia faces curse of Nobel
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the 2011 Peace Prize to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, just four days before the first round of Liberia’s presidential elections, was a controversial one. In her first term, Johnson Sirleaf did a remarkable job of launching the revival of a country emerging from civil war and economic chaos, but her decision to seek a second term was controversial as she had pledged to serve just one term.
more
Issue 219 - 4 November 2011
Gas emerges as unexpected game-changer for east coast economies
The scale of the Mamba South discovery announced by Italian major Eni wasn’t such a shock after Anadarko Petroleum Corporation’s upbeat reporting of its Barquentine-2 appraisal well, which has shown that northern Mozambique could become a major gas producer, just as northern neighbour Tanzania is shaping up to be.
more
Issue 218 - 21 October 2011
South Sudan gears up for business – if it can tackle politics and graft
The party’s over in Juba following South Sudan’s independence day on 9 July, but the new, officially English-speaking state carved out of the Republic of Sudan remains under intense scrutiny, from international organisations and business groups, as well as from international oil companies which must come to terms with the region’s new political configuration (AE 213/1). “South Sudan has to be among our highest priorities – it is the first 21st century African country and [in building its economy] we have to show we’ve learned something in the first 50 years,” the World Bank Group (WBG) chief economist for Africa, Shantayanan Devarajan, told African Energy. “We should be bringing all our resources to bear” to develop the economy.
more
Issue 217 - 7 October 2011
Tunisia: the revolution (in transition) will be liberalised
There is speculation that Rachid Ghannouchi’s Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance) party will gain a big slice of the vote when Tunisia goes to the polls on 23 October to elect the constituent assembly that will draw up a new constitution, and that polling will be followed by significant changes in the interim government ahead of an elected administration emerging by H2 2012.
more
Issue 216 - 23 September 2011
Muddling through is not enough if Jonathan is to win over north
Following his controversial election victory in April, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan faces unprecedented pressure to tackle the policy failings and lapses of implementation that so many of his predecessors failed to address. Overcoming years of underdevelopment in the power sector, creating sustainable jobs for more of the 160m population and tackling an apparently escalating number of communal and ethnic tensions are key issues for Jonathan, who is from Bayelsa State, over the next four years, and he must deliver clear results if he is to stand a chance of re-election.
more
Issue 215 - 9 September 2011
Contracts needed to show renewables schemes are more than hot air
There are signs of movement, at last, on bidding for flagship solar and other renewables projects, to be installed at either end of the continent. In North Africa, the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen) has called on four groups to submit final offers – including their proposed financial structures – for the first phase of the planned 500MW concentrated solar power (CSP) independent power plant (IPP) in Ouarzazate, launching the ambitious Moroccan Solar Plan (AE 214/10). The South African government claims that up to 300 firms are interested in developing IPPs under the government’s much-vaunted – and long-awaited – renewables programme.
more
Issue 214 - 29 July 2011
Things can’t stay the same, but needn’t fall apart in North Africa
The ‘Arab Spring’, which offered such hope of radical change across North Africa, has entered a long hot summer of doubts and fears, as the Libyan conflict drags on and populations from Morocco to Egypt wait to see if promised political reforms will deliver the hoped for dividends of more open decision-making, fairer legal systems and equitable economic opportunities that will help reduce levels of poverty and give real jobs to the region’s disaffected youth.
more
Issue 213 - 15 July 2011
New UK anti-graft act invites the question: ‘What is a bribe?’
Companies doing business in Africa are looking closely at the provisions of the UK Bribery Act, which came into force on 1 July. The act replaces and brings together previous bribery laws, which date back to 1889, setting tough penalties and making companies responsible for their co-venturers and contractors. Not only must companies feel confident about the principals they are dealing with, they must also show that adequate procedures have been put in place with the main contractor to prevent wrongdoing by subcontractors. Serious due diligence on potential partners will become more vital than ever.
more
Issue 212 - 1 July 2011
Khartoum, as well as South Sudan, will struggle with independence
Another Sudanese drama beckons with President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir’s threat to shut off the main pipeline linking oil fields in the soon-to-be-independent south with the export terminal at Port Sudan unless the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) continues to share revenues or pays a transit fee on every barrel exported. Under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Khartoum and the GoSS have split oil revenues 50/50, reflecting the south’s dominance over oil output (producing 75-80% of the Sudanese total, put officially at 500,000 b/d but probably much lower), but also the north’s control of export infrastructure. After 9 July, all that output will go to the new South Sudan.
more
Issue 211 - 20 June 2011
A risky game as IOC attention shifts from North Africa to Eastern Med
With North Africa in turmoil, the attention of many international oil companies (IOCs) has swung towards the Eastern Mediterranean – an area not unknown for intractable political conflict and instability. However, the prospect of licences being awarded over the next six to 12 months to explore for gas in the offshore territories of Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria is attracting intense interest.
more
Issue 210 - 3 June 2011
The Algerian street is alive with protest, but yet to find its political voice
A wave of strikes, adding to the localised protests across the country over social and economic issues, says much about the current mood in a North African state that has so far resisted the galvanic change that marked the early months of the Arab Spring. State energy giant Sonatrach has been affected by industrial action that its president director-general (PDG) Nordine Cherouati has struggled to control. The powerful Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens (UGTA) labour federation is fighting to keep workers within its ranks, after decades when secretary-general Abdelmajid Sidi Saïd and other union leaders held office by cutting deals in smoke-filled rooms.
In Sonatrach’s giant gasfield Hassi R’mel, workers’ spokesman Ali Arhab is criticising “the [Sonatrach] general management’s silence [on employees’ demands] and complicity of the UGTA”. Even if attempted mass protests in Algiers have been snuffed out by heavy policing, there are plenty of signs of volatility in Algeria.
more
Issue 209 - 20 May 2011
Contracts disclosure still an uphill struggle for Ghana and others
The latest development in the campaign to get Ghana and its oil industry partners to disclose details of their contracts illustrates just how haphazard the process can be. As a part of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) filing by Kosmos Energy with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), all of the petroleum agreements related to the Jubilee field are now available at the SEC website. These documents were included as exhibits in the Kosmos IPO, and while contract disclosure is not an SEC requirement, Kosmos appears to have done it because the company’s value is essentially based on Ghana and investors needed to see what they were getting.
more
Issue 208 - 6 May 2011
As demand picks up, African gas exporters have reasons to be cheerful
For an industry in which the need for large-scale investments often means developments take years, if not decades, to come to fruition, things can move remarkably quickly in the world of natural gas exports. This time last year, the industry buzz was about how the large-scale production of shale gas in the United States was threatening conventional supplies to the Atlantic Basin market, with negative potential consequences for projects in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and other liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters (AE 188/24).
Download the Issue 208 PDF
Issue 207 - 15 April 2011
Sections
