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The Manitoba Hydro International-led project implementation unit at the Liberia Electricity Corporation has begun prequalification for an operation, maintenance and training contract for the 88MW Mount Coffee hydroelectric plant. Applications were invited in June 2014, but the Ebola crisis halted work at the site between August 2014, eight months into construction, and March this year. According to the revised schedule, commissioning of the first turbine is expected in December 2016.“It was decided to restart the prequalification process because the funding organisations wanted to attract a greater number of firms than was the case in the first round of the process,” project director William Hakin told African Energy.

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.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has ordered the retirement of National Oil Company of Liberia (Nocal) president and chief executive Randolph McClain and three senior managers amid a deepening financial crisis at the company. The board has named chief operating officer Althea Sherman as head of an interim transitional management team to implement a restructuring. Other members of the team are vice president of technical services Rufus Tarnue, and vice president of finance Karmo Ville.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government has appointed recruitment consultants to find new senior management to revive the national utility as it seeks to play a positive role in reinforcing the dilapidated transmission and distribution system and supporting increased domestic generation and import capacity.Lands, mines and energy minister Patrick Sendolo told African Energy the government saw Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC)’s weaknesses as “a key constraint” to overhauling the power sector, but the utility was not in a fit state for privatisation. Even though, as a rule “government companies don’t work”, Monrovia had decided to keep LEC in public hands for now, he said in Hamburg on 5 May.

UK-based miner Hummingbird Resources has signed a co-operation agreement with IFC InfraVentures and Aldwych International to develop a 20-30MW hydropower plant in south-east Liberia. The project aims to reduce operating costs for the company’s Dugbe 1 gold project as well as providing power for the surrounding region and, in particular, the town of Greenville, the Alternative Investment Market-listed company said in a stock exchange filing on 7 April.

Bid round advisers EY opened licensing round bids from prequalified companies in London on 17 November. National Oil Company of Liberia (Nocal) said EY would now provide an independent evaluation of the fiscal terms contained in each bid. Winning bidders are expected to be notified by 24 November, and Nocal will then negotiate production-sharing contracts (PSCs) with the companies. The Liberia Basin bid round offered four undrilled offshore blocks – LB-6, LB-7, LB-16 and LB-17. The government had pledged not to award new oil concessions until it had passed a new oil law and Nocal Act, but argues that these are not new blocks.

Minerals and other commodities sales have driven economic growth and inward investment in the Mano River Union (MRU) countries, as post-conflict Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (and newer MRU member Côte d’Ivoire) have enjoyed the dividends of stability. Improved politics have raised the prospects for ‘transformational’ electricity interconnections across a long-underdeveloped region, and for offshore oil finds as investors move into polities too long submerged in militia conflicts and warlord economics. Basic services remain far from adequate but, as a work in progress, the MRU countries have delivered a generally positive story of Africa re-emergent.

Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) has invited pre-qualification applications by June 19 for operation and maintenance of the Mount Coffee hydropower plant. The run-of-river station on the St Paul River is scheduled to return to full operation by the end of 2016, following extensive rehabilitation of the plant’s infrastructure as well as uprating of its installed capacity to 80MW from its nameplate capacity of 64MW. LEC has appointed a joint venture of Norway’s Norplan and Germany’s Fichtner as owner’s engineer for the project.

Efforts to improve co-ordination between Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire are gaining momentum, with plans for the Mano River Union (MRU) to hold a senior-level meeting to promote electricity interconnection, probably in Abidjan in June, MRU secretary-general Saran Daraba Kaba told African Energy. There is growing support for development of interconnections between the four states as part of the West African Power Pool (WAPP), Guinean finance minister Mohamed Diaré told a 4 April Belgium-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce meeting in Brussels.

African Petroleum Corporation has applied for a listing on Oslo’s junior Axess market, following the appointment of new management in recent months. Controversial former chairman Frank Timis stepped down in October. “Due to historical events related to other listed companies where he has been involved, Mr Timis will not be employed by the company nor hold board positions nor play any governance role going forward,” the company said. Before founding African Petroleum, Timis was chief executive of Regal Petroleum, whose directors were fined £600,000 in 2009, after a Financial Services Authority investigation, for misleading investors on the viability of an oil well in the Aegean Sea in 2003. African Petroleum and its sister company International Petroleum listed on Australia’s National Stock Exchange in 2010 after the main Australian Stock Exchange declined to have Timis involved.

Canadian Overseas Petroleum has listed its shares on London’s main market ahead of drilling planned on LB-13 this year. The Calgary-based company, whose shares are also listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange, said drilling would start “this year, as a drilling rig and support services become available”. The company is carried by ExxonMobil for the first $120m of costs of a two-well exploration programme planned for 2014 as part of a farm-in completed in April 2013. Chevron is bringing in the newbuild West Tellus ultra-deepwater drillship to drill on its three blocks adjacent to LB-13.

Liberian farmers, charcoal producers and workers have filed a complaint with the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), accusing it of failing to monitor investments made to a failed biomass project. Between 2009 and 2011, Buchanan Renewables (BR) received $216.7m from Opic for a project to harvest rubber trees for biomass, rejuvenate family farms and generate sustainable energy for Liberia. Opic’s investment covered 70% of the costs of the project, which aimed to convert old rubber trees from the former Firestone plantation to woodchip. The woodchips were intended to fuel a 36MW biomass power plant in Monrovia and be sold for export.

The Liberia Electricity Corporation has signed an agreement with the UK’s Dawnus International to carry out enabling works for the Mount Coffee hydropower rehabilitation project. Work will include building two cofferdams and the advance camp, as well as removal of vegetation and cleaning the powerhouse, and will be carried out by April 2014. The 64MW facility on the St Paul River was built in 1966 and extensively damaged during Liberia’s civil war. The government signed a €50m agreement with the European Investment Bank early last year to finance the rehabilitation work.

A rig is due into Liberia next year for a multi-company drilling programme in Q2 2014. Chevron, ExxonMobil, ‘super-indie’ Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and potentially African Petroleum Corporation could all drill next year, although the latter is hoping for a farm-out first. Chevron has already drilled two wells on its acreage without releasing results. “We’re staying quiet on the results but we’re coming back to drill some more,” Chevron Africa & Latin America Exploration & Production Company vice president frontier exploration and appraisal Ken Sample told African Energy.

Liberia has won $50m of funding from the Climate Investment Funds for its Scaling-up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) investment plan. The programme aims to improve access to power in rural areas through off-grid electricity schemes based on small hydro, solar, biomass, and hybrid systems. The investment plan has been organised into a single programme in order to lower costs and address capacity constraints.