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The Direction Général de Hydrocarbures has approved the development and production plan for the Ruche development on Harvest Natural Resources’ Dussafu Marin permit. The development includes the Ruche A, Ruche B (Tortue), Ruche C (Moubenga) and Ruche D (Walt Whitman) discoveries. The plan is based on a centrally located floating production, storage and offloading vessel with sub-sea wells tied back from each of these discoveries. Front-end engineering design studies are under way and, once these are completed, a final investment decision is scheduled for Q1 2015.

More changes have been announced in Sonatrach’s senior management, this time involving subsidiaries. New heads were named at insurance company Cash Assurances (82% owned by Sonatrach), drilling company Entreprise Nationale de Forage (Enafor), Entreprise Nationale des Services aux Puits (ENSP), Entreprise Nationale des Travaux aux Puits (ENTP), Hyproc Shipping Company and Tassili Airlines (TAL). Cash and TAL are in need of stringent financial controls; the drilling and services companies, like Sonatrach itself, are having to cut costs to reflect low oil prices that have led to projects being frozen.

US company ContourGlobal has started up a 100MW triple fuel power plant in Lomé, making Togo self-sufficient in energy and boosting the nascent West Africa Power Pool.

Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) withheld N3.2trn ($16bn) in revenue from the federal government in 2014, according to a report by the auditor-general echoing accusations by former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Lamido Sanusi. The report by auditor-general Samuel Ukura said the findings were based on an “examination of NNPC mandates to CBN on Domestic Crude Oil Sales and Reconciliation Statement of Technical Sub-committee of Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting held in January 2014”. It put the amount not remitted to the FAAC at N3,234,577,666,791.35.

A consortium of Belgium’s Besix, France’s NGE and Morocco’s Société Générale des Travaux du Maroc has won a contract from Nachtigal Hydro Power Company (NHPC) to design and build the 420MW Nachtigal dam on the Sanaga River. Besix said the contract involved designing and building a dam up to 2km long and 14 metres high in roller-compacted concrete, and a 3km supply canal, as well as civil engineering works for the hydroelectric power plant with seven 60MW turbines and water intake facilities.

National Oil Corporation (NOC) subsidiaries and the state company’s joint ventures with international oil companies have led the push to restart work on oil field developments that were planned (and in some cases started) before the revolution that removed former Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.

The next year will see the emergence of a new institutional architecture to promote increased electricity generation and access to ‘modern’ fuels across sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the acronyms are already familiar: the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) and UN-led Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) are exciting the consultancies eyeing a new spate of contracts. There will be some fresh initiatives bolted on to these, driven by players such as new African Union (AU) Commission head Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and European Union (EU) commissioner for development Andris Piebalgs. Amid the talk, a clearer understanding of who does what may emerge. This is essential if ideas are to be turned into cost-effective action on the ground. “There is still no number to dial where you can find PIDA,” one player comments.

The government of Equatorial Guinea has received a CFA80bn ($138m) loan from the Development Bank of Central African States (BDEAC) to complete construction of the 200MW Sendje hydropower project. The project on the Wele River, about 40km east of the port city of Bata, is being carried out by the Ukrainian contractor Duglas Alliance under a turnkey contract at a total cost of more than CFA306bn.

Insurance markets are unmoved by the corruption enquiries at Sonatrach that have forced the replacement of the state oil company’s top management, but the question of an eventual successor to President Bouteflika is less clear

The government signed an agreement on 1 February with Gasmeth Energy Ltd to extract and process methane gas from Lake Kivu for a compressed natural gas (CNG) project.Gasmeth plans to finance, construct and maintain a gas extraction, processing and compression project including a gas extraction plant on Lake Kivu. The company will extract and separate methane gas from the lake’s water and transport it to an onshore plant for processing.

AMEA Power chairman Hussain Nowais on 1 February signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop a 120MW solar project in Chad. The plan is for a turnkey project to be delivered in October 2020. The agreement was signed with petroleum and energy minister Mahamat Hamid Koua, a former deputy secretary-general of the government and trade minister who was appointed the previous day. Koua replaced Aziza Mariam El-Bashir, former deputy director-general of Société des Hydrocarbures du Tchad, who was appointed on 21 January and sacked ten days later.

Somalia plans to launch a licensing round in Q2 2017 offering acreage in the central and southern offshore. Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources permanent secretary Jamal Mursal told Global Pacific & Partners’ Africa Upstream conference in Cape Town on 1 November that Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil intended to resume work on the licences they placed in force majeure in 1990, while BP had relinquished its former onshore acreage.

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.

The Mauritanian and Senegalese governments see the deep-water Senegal River Basin’s reserves as offering potential feedstock for future gas-to-power schemes, as well as supplying the floating liquefaction plant planned by Kosmos and other international oil companies (IOCs) to export gas. This would provide an economic boost that officials have told African Energy outweighs any political tensions between the two countries. Moves to implement an inter-governmental co-operation agreement (IGCA), which would allow the two countries to commercialise their gas, are being “driven from the top” by Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz and Senegalese President Macky Sall.

State oil firm PetroSA announced on 22 June that Mapula Modipa had resigned for personal reasons after a year as acting group chief executive. Siphamandla Mthethwa, currently group chief financial officer of PetroSA shareholder Central Energy Fund, will take over as acting chief executive until a permanent replacement is announced.Faced with extreme financial pressure following a record loss of R14.6bn for the 2014-15 financial year and the urgency of getting new gas into the system, PetroSA last year put its licence portfolio up for sale, appointing E&Y as divestment adviser.