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Pirates are causing much distress to the international shipping and energy communities, but the new head of the Somali Transitional Federal Government brings hope to the region

Underlining the extent to which its membership of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries is hampering plans to raise its output, Angola has formally written to OPEC secretary-general Abdullah Al-Badri requesting exemption from implementing its production target obligations (AE 160/1). The call for “special consideration”

Its MagEnergy Inc subsidiary has “found the Democratic Republic of Congo to be a very challenging investment environment,” TSX Venture Exchange-listed MagIndustries Corporation president and chief executive William Burton told the ambitious Canadian company’s first ever investor conference call, on 17 April. But Mag is pushing on with its Inga II refurbishment work, talks to finalise contracts – originally initialled in September 2005 – for work on four more Inga II generators and plans to build a 250MW hydropower dam at Busanga in Katanga (AE 146/5-9). It is also very bullish about fund-raising and other prospects for its potash and forestry schemes in Republic of Congo, which Burton confirmed would cost around $1.1bn as currently configured – releasing data that received a respectful hearing from the 89 analysts and others who dialled into the 17 April teleconference.

South Africa’s generous new renewable energy feed-in tariff (Refit) regime, announced by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), is a potentially significant catalyst for Africa’s slow-moving carbon credits market. The new regime is designed to spur potential wind, mini-hydro, landfill-gas and solar power investments, where carbon credits are available

Gas is a strategic issue, for consumers anxious to ensure security of supply, as well as for exporters looking to maximise the yield on heavy investments in liquefaction and pipelines, and – in some cases such as Russia’s Gazprom – seeking to gain political advantage through their control of an essential commodity (AE 147/1, 143/24, 135/1).

A Canadian junior’s project to redevelop a significant cluster of oilfields alongside two state companies suggests it’s not just big, long-established partners that are making the running in Republic of Congo, writes Eleanor Gillespie.

Having emerged to some fanfare as a new E&P frontier in 2005-08, Madagascar has offered a much gloomier prospect this year.

Uganda is phasing out its costly diesel-fired emergency power, replacing it in the short term with heavy fuel oil (HFO) and in the longer term with hydro and small amounts of co-generation from sugar plants (AE 149/6).

With the military top brass that prop up his régime boycotting the mid-February ceremony to launch a long-awaited national unity government, President Robert Mugabe and his allies are manoeuvring, as ever, to hobble his key political opponent and new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

As southern African demand soars and power imports become harder to obtain, Botswana is looking to its coal and coalbed methane to meet local electricity needs. A financing decision on the Morupule B coal-fired plant is expected this month, and a number of CBM schemes are making progress, writes Kevin Godier.

Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Company (Zesa) still owes money to the Cahora Bassa dam operating company Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), despite promises to clear its debt.

Rwanda’s state water and power utility Electrogaz will commission a 20MW heavy fuel oil plant at Jabana at the end of February.

While international oil companies and financiers enthuse about Ghana’s perceived energy industry potential, civil society groups have expressed alarm over the way the Jubilee Field development is being fast-tracked before legislation is in place.

Is Libya, with its huge and apparently available upstream potential – not to mention its long pockets following several years of oil price boom – going to break investors’ hearts by embracing the sort of resource nationalism that the more liberal members of Muammar Qadhafi’s regime say the Jamahiriya (State of the Masses) had left behind? Since Colonel Qadhafi said that Libya might nationalise

While Nigerians have been speculating once more about the future of ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, his new Petroleum Resources Minister Rilwanu Lukman has shown a taste for decisive action that has been largely missing in recent months, when promises to restructure Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other key energy bodies were let slip (AE 152/24, 149/24).