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AIM-listed Sound Energy has announced a better-than-expected gas flow from the TE-7 appraisal well on the Tendrara licence, and has raised a net £24.3m ($32m) through a share offer as it talks up the potential for a “huge gas deposit”. The share offer, at the market price rather than a discount, used the PrimaryBid.com online platform to enable private investors to participate on the same terms as institutions.

Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) has signed financing arrangements for $1.4bn equivalent of 16-year, multi-currency non-recourse project financing for the 700MW expansion of the Jorf Lasfar coal-fired power complex.

Ministry of Energy and Petroleum cabinet secretary Davis Chirchir has said that negotiations with the African Development Bank (AfDB) for a KSh60bn ($680m) loan for a project to expand access to electricity from 32% to 70% over five years are at an advanced stage and should be completed by December. Disbursement of the first Sh12bn instalment is anticipated in this financial year. Speaking at a media briefing for transmission and distribution company Kenya Power on 28 July, he said that, if successful, the project would take the number of electricity customers in Kenya from 2.8m currently to more than 8m by 2020.

US firm ContourGlobal has signed a $146m non-recourse financing agreement with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic) for the construction of a 100MW power plant in Lomé (AE 144/13). The project is due on stream by year-end. It will be powered by six Wärtsilä 18V50DF engines (16.6MW each), which can operate on natural gas, heavy fuel oil (HFO), and distillate diesel oil. The project will operate on HFO until gas becomes available from the West African Gas Pipeline. Contour Global has a 25-year concession and power purchase agreement to sell its power to Togolese distributor Compagnie d’Energie Electrique du Togo.

New Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) facility Green Africa Power (AE259/17) is looking to recruit an experienced fund manager with previous involvement with renewable energy to manage its £95m ($150m) investment fund. The tender has been registered on the European Union public procurement website – ted.europa.eu/ – with the reference 2013-279690. The contract will be valid for an initial period of three or five years, expected to commence in early 2014, with potential for two one-year extensions.

Oil trader Arcadia Petroleum has secured a farm-in from Spain’s Repsol on its offshore licence 0010. Repsol plans to take a 44% stake and assume operatorship.

Few markets have shifted focus as quickly in recent decades as the natural gas industry, where the application of new technology to tight gas reserves, starting in North America, has transformed the outlook for ‘conventional’ producers. This trend has yet to shake Africa,

The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) has lifted sanctions on National Oil Corporation (NOC)’s Benghazi-based subsidiary Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco).

In a last-ditch bid to hang on to the licence, Hyperdynamics is claiming its Fatala well was a discovery, despite initially announcing it had not encountered hydrocarbons. The licence was due to expire on 21 September unless a discovery was made. Nigeria’s South Atlantic Petroleum, which farmed in to the licence in March, has withdrawn, but Hyperdynamics said it would be seeking a two-year appraisal period. However the company, which struggled to find funding and partners to drill Fatala, is likely to find financing appraisal work a challenge.

Algeria and its energy industry are transfixed by drift and inertia as anti-corruption enquiries continue, energy minister Chakib Khelil is put under pressure and President Bouteflika’s intentions remain unclear

Norway’s Jacobsen Elektro is waiting for the government to decide on renewal of the power purchase agreement (PPA) for its 50MW heavy fuel oil power plant near Kampala. Managing director Roar Millehaugen told African Energy the plant’s original PPA expired on 15 September 2014, but the company had agreed a six-month extension to March 2015, and was now awaiting a decision on the renewal. The government has the right to take over ownership of the plant, but would have to first repay Jacobsen for loans set up when finance for the project was first arranged, although the amount is undisclosed.

French geophysical services company CGG on 30 August announced an agreement with GNPC Operating Services Company Ltd (Gosco) to form a joint venture company focused on 2D, 3D and 4D marine seismic acquisition and related services. The company, Gosco Geoscience Ltd, will be a Ghanaian indigenous company based in Accra. Gosco, an independent Ghanaian upstream services company, operates the Offshore South-West Tano and East Keta petroleum blocks.

UK gold miner Hummingbird Resources has reported positive results from a preliminary version of a prefeasibility study carried out by Knight Piésold into the possibility of developing a hydroelectric power plant to supply its Dugbe gold mine project (AE 298/12). The study looked at four different configurations for the power plant, ranging between 15MW and 30MW, using intake from the Dugbe and Botou rivers and Geebo creek. Although the mine was originally expected to have a total demand of 30MW, this has been revised down to 16MW, allowing potential for supplying the grid should one of the larger power plants be selected.

Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom has said it will invest $120m in exploration of the El Assel perimeter, which it secured in the seventh bid round on 13 December.

Somaliland has had some success at attracting companies to explore for oil, but is burdened by Somalia’s troubles and by its lack of international recognition, writes Nadine Marroushi.