Search results

The hybridisation of the Mongo diesel mini-grid has been delayed to Q1 2022, ZIZ Energies commercial and industrial (C&I) director Julien Mbainaissem told African Energy.

Eni’s Coral Sul floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) plant began production of LNG on 2 October, African Energy understands from industry sources. The cargo – Mozambique and Coral Sul’s first liquefied natural gas exports – will be collected by the 174,000m3 BW Lesmes tanker, owned by Singapore-headquartered BW Group.

President Idriss Déby Itno’s son Séïd Idriss Déby Itno was named director-general of state oil company Société des Hydrocarbures du Tchad (SHT) on 24 December. He was previously deputy director-general of the Djermaya refinery, a post also occupied at one stage by his cousin Haoua Daoussa Déby. He was at the centre of a row with the Chinese management last year over positions for Chadians at the refinery. At SHT Déby replaces Tahir Hamid Nguilin, who was previously a top official of the Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale.

The Sahel region’s multi-faceted crises have deepened further with junior officers replacing their seniors in Burkina Faso’s latest coup d’état, a move which now threatens sanctions and other retaliation from Ecowas states, increases diplomatic tensions with western governments – while Russia helps to fan the flames – and undermines business initiatives and efforts to make economies more sustainable. African Energy analyses the latest developments in Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea and Mali, along with their G5 Sahel partner Niger and other big stakeholders in the region.

Having successfully deployed 120MW of temporary power to prevent power outages in Tunisia over the summer peak period, Aggreko plans to transport this equipment by road into Libya, where its commercial rival APR Energy secured a huge 450MW contract this year. African Energy understands that APR is still installing some of its units. General Electricity Company of Libya (Gecol) initially insisted on the supply of 25MW gas turbines, as they are more compact. But these have not always been appropriate, either due to noise disturbance or because they could not be satisfactorily linked to the grid. Although the summer peak period has now past, there are still power cuts throughout the country.

Mali’s second coup d’état in less than a year, following the Chadian president’s death fighting on the frontline, are violent reminders of the stakes at play in the Sahel region, which veers from crisis to crisis despite ever larger efforts by regional governments and their international partners, who are pushing hard to catalyse much-needed investment flows into suffering economies.

Brave efforts are being made to continue with business as usual in the Sahel, despite an apparently never-ending security crisis, which has been further aggravated by a split in the western-backed G5 Sahel (G5S) alliance of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, as the military-led regime in Bamako seeks to distance itself from France and its allies.

As generators hum into action and power cuts intensify during the dry season, it seems hard to believe that providing electricity to the population in Conakry and other urban centres will be a major selling point when, as is widely expected, President Alpha Condé launches his campaign to win a third term in 2020. But the pace of recent generation and transmission projects supports the view of many Conakry residents that ‘power is coming’.

China under President Xi Jinping has shifted markedly from its position of not intervening in foreign conflicts – even in a multilateral context – and positioning its forces far from the People’s Republic. Beijing has stepped up its military presence in Africa over the last decade, in large part through its contributions to United Nations peace-keeping missions.

The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) has issued general procurement notices for detailed techno-economic feasibility studies for the Kolwezi-Solwezi and Zambia-Mozambique power interconnector projects, to be financed with a grant from the African Development Bank. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (IPPF) approved grants worth $3.88m in March for transmission interconnections between Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, and between Zambia and Mozambique.

The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) is operating with a power deficit of 2,154MW, despite the addition of over 4,000MW to its grid in 2018. Opening the 46th SAPP executive committee meeting in Harare on 22 March, Zimbabwe’s deputy minister of energy and power development Magna Mudyiwa said SAPP currently had an installed generation capacity of 68,869MW, with approximately 55,181MW operating against demand and an estimated reserve of 57,335MW, leaving a deficit of 2,154MW.

Representatives of the governments of Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Dar es Salaam on 30 September to facilitate a project to connect the power grids of the three countries, linking the Eastern and Southern African power pools. The ZTK Interconnector is a Southern African Development Community (SADC) priority project with a total cost estimated at around $860m, according to research by Ernst & Young in conjunction with the SADC presented in 2013. Tanzania’s minister of energy and minerals, Sospeter Muhongo, said that they hoped to complete the project by 2016.

The West African Transco CLSG transmission network is working to build a second 243MW line, begin energy trade with indebted Liberia and integrate C&I customers and renewable energy sources into the sub-regional network that covers Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The Skype line to a group of power developers in Nairobi is cut abruptly. When it returns, African Energy asks whether the interruption was caused by political turbulence; it surely can’t be due to generation shortfalls? (Kenya is building up a surplus of generation capacity). Of course not, chorus participants at the Nairobi end: it’s down to transmission and distribution (T&D) problems. Across sub-Saharan Africa, investment in transmission – including modern high-voltage lines – has lagged as planners and investors have focused on generation.

Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) has energised the 308km 400/220/132kV Olkaria-Lessos-Kisumu transmission project, significantly boosting the supply network in the west. The new connection upgrades western Kenya’s power capacity and will facilitate stable supply from the Olkaria geothermal fields to the area adjacent to Lake Victoria including Kisumu City and Kisumu seaport.