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Abu Dhabi’s involvement in conflicts in Sudan and Libya is back in focus, after the UAE opened a second field hospital in eastern Chad, following evidence that its existing hospital was used as a cover for supplying weapons to Sudanese civil war leader Hemedti’s RSF militia. It fits into a wider pattern of Emirati involvement in African conflicts, as well as business.

Algeria is squeezing whatever gas it can out of the system for export and Morocco is looking at different options for its smaller reserves, but Libya and Egypt face bigger challenges still, with the bare minimum export LNG leaving Egyptian terminals this year.

London-listed independent Harbour Energy has announced a $11.2bn cash, debt and share deal to acquire Wintershall Dea’s assets in Algeria, Egypt, Libya and five other countries. The reverse takeover is complicated by the involvement of Russian-linked investors

Italian major Eni has blazed a trail back into Libya that numerous international oil companies are now following. Even if the risks on re-entry remain severe at many levels, the lure of unprecedented, if controversial, opportunities may be impossible to resist.

The final COP28 communiqué included – for the first time – a commitment to eventually phase out fossil fuels, going beyond previous declarations that focused on coal. However, there are few signs that Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) members and their Opec+ allies, led by Russia, have any intention of allowing their core source of revenues to disappear anytime soon. So what can we learn from recent statements by oil producers – including Opec+’s quota commitments at a meeting on 30 November – and from leaks and comments made during COP28?

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) was not the only national oil giant to lever its agenda into the climate discussions at COP28 in Dubai. Among the other interlopers was National Oil Corporation (NOC), whose chairman Farhat Bengdara told journalists that Libya will increase oil production from 1.2m b/d now to 2m b/d in the next three to five years.

Disasters in Morocco and then Libya in the first half of September – the first a natural disaster, the second largely the product of human mismanagement – have put renewed pressure on the authorities in both countries.

NOC Libya’s domestic drilling subsidiary National Oil Well Drilling and Maintenance Company has outsourced an entire drilling operation to an international provider for the first time.

Gulf governments have proved among President Vladimir Putin’s most enthusiastic friends, undermining western efforts to isolate Moscow in a relationship that goes beyond energy and business links. With the mercenary Wagner Group active across the Sahel, several dozen cargo flights between Abu Dhabi and a remote air strip in eastern Chad have provoked renewed speculation about the UAE’s ties with Moscow and its proxies, Gulf States Newsletter staff* report.

The conviction by a Tripoli criminal court of former National Oil Corporation (NOC) international marketing department (IMD) chief Imad Ben Rajab on charges of importing off-spec or adulterated gasoline in oil-for-fuel swaps has exposed one of the many ways in which corrupt actors have used the oil trade to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from the Libyan state.

A $7bn budget allocation made last year to National Oil Corporation was intended to boost crude output, but no new projects have yet been launched, prompting questions over the lack of oversight at NOC, in a state already hollowed out by smuggling, corruption and theft. It comes amid signs that Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Al-Dabaiba and rival warlord Khalifa Haftar are taking greater control over oil revenues, raising further questions for IOCs who are wondering whether to reinvest, writes John Hamilton.

Amid a waning consensus over strategy, the Opec+ meeting in early June broke up with African members unhappy at an unwelcome squeeze on their future production while Saudi Arabia made a unilateral output cut of 1m b/d, reflecting Riyadh’s determination to shape market forces, writes Jon Marks.

The prospects for giga-scale renewable power projects in North Africa have never been better, leveraging off export-led green hydrogen projects and the advantages of adding cheap non-emitting capacity to already well-developed grids. But the latest figures from African Energy Live Data show that, over the next five years, North Africa will instead pour ever more natural gas into a growing fleet of open cycle plants, while relatively few wind and solar projects have firm completion dates.

Electricity industry activity is accelerating fast, driven by an old school approach to contracting, and while the revamped Supreme Council for Energy Affairs (Scea) under Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Al-Dabaiba continues to push gas-to-power projects, Libya may finally be joining the renewables party too, with signs of movement on several solar PV projects, writes John Hamilton.

National Oil Corporation has relaunched its growth-oriented upstream strategy and is encouraging international companies to help Libya achieve the 2m b/d crude oil production target mooted for at least 15 years. Eni’s recent huge gas development agreement with NOC suggests the market’s need for Libyan hydrocarbons has trumped more pessimistic assessments of the government’s capabilities, but widespread political, social and legal opposition to the Italian deal is a reminder that, while huge growth in oil and gas production is technically feasible, developments remain prey to Libya’s volatile politics.