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A financial crisis is undermining the Nigerian electricity supply industry (ESI), but just as important is the lack of natural gas to generate power, as potential suppliers have ducked calls for much-increased supply to the domestic industry while purchase prices remain low and cost-reflective tariffs are elusive. Lack of gas is compromising efforts to increase generated electricity output, shown in African Energy’s analysis of available data and forecasts based on research for the African Energy Database.

Griffiths Energy International has been hit with a record fine for paying bribes as part of its efforts to secure exploration acreage in Chad, after the company’s new management uncovered evidence of wrongdoing and reported it to Canadian police.

The government’s attempts to disregard parliament’s oil resolutions, and to weaken the capacity of a corruption probe committee, have met with considerable opposition, underlining the capacity of domestic politics to complicate Uganda’s passage to becoming an oil producer

Norway’s Spectrum ASA has announced an agreement to acquire 28,000km of long offset 2D seismic data offshore southern Somalia. Spectrum’s survey will cover areas licensed to Pecten, a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil, which have been under force majeure since 1992. It will also manage and market 20,000km of 2D data gathered and processed by Soma Oil & Gas in 2014, which it says the survey is designed to complement. Soma – a UK company chaired by former Conservative party leader Lord (Michael) Howard – is giving the results of its survey to the federal government in return for the right to pre-emptively choose 12 blocks.

For long a significant player in project finance and emerging markets, BNP Paribas (BNPP) has become a bigger force still on the Africa and Middle East energy scene with the acquisition

Australia’s Beach Energy has named former Woodside vice-president Rob Cole as its new managing director, replacing Reg Nelson, who is stepping down after nearly 25 years. Beach is Australia’s largest onshore oil producer, but also has the Lake Tanganyika South licence in Tanzania, where Woodside farmed in in July, taking 70%.

Australia’s Swala Energy has submitted bids for three exploration permits. The bids are for Block 31, which includes part of Lake Tanganyika and was previously licensed to Rapid African Energy, and Karoo blocks 42 and 44 in the south of the country. If the applications are successful, Swala will have an 83% equity interest in any block awarded. Block 3, Zambia’s largest, lies within the East African Rift System, adjacent to acreage held on the Tanzanian side of the lake by Australia’s Beach Petroleum.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) is investing €60m ($76m) in direct financing, and co-ordinating €138m in syndicated and parallel loans to the Kribi Power Development Company (KPDC) for its 216MW gas-fired power plant project

Sterling Energy has announced plans to raise £62.5m ($103m) through a discounted share placing and says it is no longer in takeover talks.

The European Investment Bank has launched its first international bond issue denominated in Zambian kwacha.

Sonangol chief executive Isabel dos Santos left a large audience in London in no doubt she was a highly qualified entrepreneur, whose appointment to head the Angolan national oil company (NOC) was made on merit. The task of restructuring Sonangol was a process that could take five years, she said during a rare public interview at the Reuters headquarters in Canary Wharf on 18 October; she was focused on this major challenge above all else, skirting around other elements of the business empire that has made her probably Africa’s richest woman.

Proposals for a refinery at Coega in the Eastern Cape have been thrown into doubt by the National Planning Commission’s lack of enthusiasm for a new refinery, writes Adrian J Browne. A new report from the National Planning Commission has questioned the need for another refinery, casting further doubt over proposals for a refinery at the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ).

Former Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) exploration, production and technical services director Halfani Halfani has been appointed as Ophir Energy Tanzania country chairman. Halfani has retired from TPDC, which has undergone a significant restructuring with the appointment of new director-general James Mataragio and the recruitment of large numbers of new staff in preparation for its new role as national oil company. Mataragio had previously spent ten years with Bell Geospace in Houston.

Total and Kosmos Energy have both signed a Joint Declaration of Principles with the Moroccan government setting out commitments regarding exploration and any eventual development in the disputed Western Sahara. Kosmos said the declaration signed on 19 December 2013 outlined commitments on exploration activities and the key principles under which development would proceed if commercially viable hydrocarbon deposits were discovered. It stated that any such development would be undertaken in accordance with international standards, including those in the United Nations Charter and in the 2002 UN legal opinion on resource development in the territory.

Senior managers at Sonatrach have resorted to unconventional measures to overcome the financial pressure on the organisation caused by the sharp fall in the oil price. These include asking suppliers for a substantial discount on competitively awarded contracts that have already been signed. Many recipients of such letters are believed to have so far refused to comply as the requested discount would consume most of their profits. There is, however, some concern that refusal may cost them future business.