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Is anyone listening to National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla? He has issued repeated appeals to the international community to change its approach to the crisis in Libya to help his institution to better carry out its functions and to protect the interests of the Libyan people.At Chatham House in January, he described NOC as “the best guarantee that Libya will remain as a unitary state” and called for the international community to support its independence.

Libya
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The purchase of BG Group by Royal Dutch Shell confirmed predictionsthat the falling oil price would trigger a spate of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the upstream industry. It points to a need for even the biggest players to build scale in developing their natural gas trade; for Shell, BG’s assets in Australia and the Atlantic Basin (Brazil) will help to secure a dominant position in Asian and other key markets for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Issue 338 - 19 January 2017

Gabon: Spectrum seismic

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Spectrum has begun the first of three multi-client 3D seismic acquisition programmes offshore Gabon in preparation for future licensing rounds. On 31 December, Spectrum started acquisition of the 10,000km2 Gryphon 3D survey in southern Gabon. Spectrum said the survey had attracted strong industry funding and was expected to be completed in early Q3 2017. A further 5,000km2 3D survey over open acreage in northern Gabon, and an additional 3,000km2 3D survey offshore central Gabon will start in Q1 and Q2 respectively. Gravity and magnetic data will also be acquired.

Gabon
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As African Energy editor Thalia Griffiths leaves to explore new opportunities, colleagues asked for her take on developments after 23 years leading the publication. For all the tragedies like the current Ethiopian conflict, she sees real hope for a better future on a continent where, in many places, governance has improved and previously marginalised populations are becoming empowered to enact positive change.

Ghana | Mozambique | South Sudan | Angola | Nigeria | Uganda
Issue 339 - 03 February 2017

Mozambique: Domestic gas projects

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The Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy has awarded contracts for domestic gas development projects to three of the 14 companies who bid last year in a tender for projects to utilise gas from the Rovuma Basin development.Norway’s Yara International was granted an allocation of 80-90 mcf/d of gas to produce 1.2-1.3m t/yr of fertilisers and 30MW-50MW of power. Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Shell Moçambique BV was granted 310-330mcf/d of gas to produce 38m b/d of liquid fuels (diesel, naphtha and kerosene) and 50MW-80MW of power.

Mozambique
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The timing of the official commissioning of the 650,000 b/d Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemical Plant on 22 May said as much about local political sensitivities as it did about the facility’s undoubted importance for the Nigerian energy sector.

Nigeria
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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?

Angola | Nigeria | Libya | Congo Brazzaville | Algeria
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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.

Nigeria | Algeria
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The conflict over the former Spanish Sahara is all too often forgotten. But there is a growing feeling in policy circles – shared by companies eager to exploit the territory’s hydrocarbons and mineral potential – that the Western Sahara standoff is overdue a promotion up the international policy agenda. Crisis in the Sahel, where French and African Union forces have confronted jihadist radicals in Mali, has added to pressures to revisit the intractable conflict, more than 40 years since the Polisario Front liberation movement was formed, 38 years since Morocco’s late King Hassan II organised his ‘Green March’ into the territory, and 22 years since a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire was declared.

Morocco
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Under immense pressure from the global spread of Covid-19 and plunging oil demand, governments and IOCs must once again fine-tune their strategies to meet hostile market conditions. This may mean not only delaying upstream projects but cancelling them altogether as, in the longer term, global markets shift out of carbon dependency.In the short term, efforts to revive the so-called Opec+ cooperation between Opec and non-Opec crude exporters should help to reverse the price slump, but the deal seems unlikely to raise prices to levels envisaged in producer governments’ 2020 budget forecasts.

Free

President Félix Tshisekedi’s efforts to revive Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s attraction to international oil companies (IOCs) are admirable on paper, as are his efforts to revive – and bring improved governance to – the crucial energy and mining sectors. Having broken with his alliance of convenience with ex-president Joseph Kabila, Tshisekedi’s government is looking for takers for blocks 1 and 2 in the Albertine Graben, and there is talk of a new licensing round, with plans to tender for 16 oil and three gas blocks in the onshore Atlantic basin, Cuvette Centrale and the western Rift Valley.

DR Congo
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Headlines in mid-October suggested renewed vibrancy in the Nigerian hydrocarbons industry under President Muhammadu Buhari, talking of mega-deals involving ExxonMobil and Indian investment, and plans for exploration in the north-east (see Upstream) and to raise domestic refining capacity to 650,000 b/d (from 445,000 b/d). But the divestment to the local Nipco Investments of ExxonMobil’s 60% stake in Mobil Oil Nigeria leaves Total as the sole major still operating in the downstream; the Indian deal, if it can be delivered, seems a desperate effort to raise cash. International oil companies (IOCs) continue to downsize, amid a damaging escalation of Niger Delta violence.

Nigeria
Free

President Muhammadu Buhari finally responded to popular concerns over security by replacing his military top team on 26 January. With the economy hobbled by low oil prices and coronavirus, he has allowed a little more economic flexibility, although it remains to be seen whether his costly defence of the naira’s inflated value will be replaced by the foreign exchange market unification favoured by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Nigeria
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Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dabaiba may just have won another round in the unedifying slugfest for control over Libya’s government and resources. It seemed like a mistake when Dabaiba replaced National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla with former Qadhafi-era Central Bank of Libya governor Farhat Ben Gdara in late July, but the move seems to have bought the PM more time.

Libya
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Less than a year from elections, numerous candidates are eyeing up the prize of taking over from President Muhammadu Buhari. 

Nigeria