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Operator Dana Petroleum is seeking to farm down part of its 55% interest in the Bakassi West production sharing contract ahead of a drilling commitment next year. Dana’s partners in the block are Madison Petrogas subsidiary Madison Cameroon Oil and Gas with 35%, and the local SoftRock Oil and Gas with 10%. Madison is being acquired by Sea Dragon Energy under a merger agreement announced in August.

Edinburgh-based Bowleven has said that the Zingana exploration well on the onshore Bomono permit has encountered hydrocarbons. Bowleven gave few details but said the well had been drilled to 1,720 metres total depth and had found hydrocarbons in the target Paleocene aged reservoir intervals. The rig will now be moved to drill Moambe, the second well in the programme. Located just over 2km east of Zingana, Moambe is a previously undrilled Paleocene aged robust three-way dip closed fault block.

Golar LNG has agreed commercial terms and conditions with Perenco and state oil company Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH) for a floating liquefied natural gas export project. The Bermuda-registered company announced on 24 December that it had signed a heads of agreement with SNH and Perenco. Golar said the tolling agreement which defines the material commercial terms and conditions for the project is now subject to finalisation with SNH, and government approval. The midstream gas convention setting out the regulatory and fiscal regime governing FLNG operations in Cameroon is being progressed in parallel with the tolling agreement and is also now subject to finalisation with the government.

Edinburgh-based Bowleven on 1 June announced the start of drilling on the Zingana exploration well on the onshore Bomono permit, the first of two wells planned for this year. Zingana is located 20km north-west of Douala, and will target a Paleocene-aged three-way dip closed-fault block that was partially penetrated by shallow wells drilled in the 1950s. The well will be drilled to a target depth of around 2,000 metres.

The government is in talks with Russia’s RusGazEngineering on a project to build a second refinery at Limbé. The Sonara refinery was completed in 1981 and has a capacity of 45,000 b/d, but is effectively bankrupt due to government payment arrears. A delegation from the Russian company visited Cameroon from 28 November to 2 December and signed a letter of intent covering feasibility studies for the refinery, as well as power transmission lines, a products pipeline and urban water supply schemes.

Tower Resources says it is close to signing a production-sharing contract (PSC) for the Dissoni Block, which was offered in a licensing round in 2013. In a results announcement on 18 May, Tower said it had negotiated a detailed work programme with the government and expected to be ready to sign a final PSC in mid-2015.

The Logbaba power plant has begun delivering 30MW to the grid, fuelled by gas from Victoria Oil & Gas (VOG) subsidiary Gaz du Cameroun. VOG said on 23 April it had begun gas supply to the plant following the installation of gas-fired electricity generators by Altaaqa Global. GDC’s gas is also supplying the 20MW Bassa plant, which started up in March, and the new supply triggers take or pay conditions in a contract with state utility Eneo Cameroun signed in December 2014, which fixes guaranteed minimum take or pay gas consumption at $9/mBtu over the two-year contract term.

Power utility Eneo has begun work to modernise transmission and distribution networks linking Douala and other major towns as part of a $60.6m investment spend planned for 2015. Following its takeover by UK private equity player Actis, the work confirms the former AES Sonel’s renewed commitment to improving supply across the country, despite concern over payment flows from the government.The investment announcement followed efforts to boost generation with the start-up of the 20.8MW Bassa gas-to-power plant, with 16 gensets installed by Saudi Arabia’s Altaaqa. This will be followed by the 30MW Logbaba plant, to come on line in April.

A well-managed, environmentally friendly rubbish dump at Nkolfoulou, just outside Yaoundé, encapsulates the huge potential and daily frustrations of project development in Cameroon. Operator Hysacam, created in Douala in 1969, collects waste – 80% of it organic – from the capital to bury in its landfill site. Polluting methane would normally build up, but Hysacam has mobilised Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits and other support to install an efficient biogas collection system. So far so good, say Hysacam’s no-nonsense local management, as waste disposal trucks line up patiently to be weighed and discharge.

Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH) has issued terms of reference for the licensing of six blocks: Bomana (139.67km2), Lungahe (83.6km2) and Bakassi East (364.07km2) in the Rio Del Rey Basin; Etindé Exploration (1,860km2) and Elombo (2,405km2) in the Douala/Kribi-Campo Basin; and Manyu (1209.00 km2) in the Mamfe Basin.

London Stock Exchange-listed Victoria Oil and Gas announced on 23 March that its subsidiary Gaz du Cameroun (GDC) had completed the construction of a gas pipeline to Eneo Cameroon’s 20.8MW Bassa power plant and that it was supplying the plant with 4.5mcf/d of gas, allowing the facility to operate at full capacity. The plant comprises 16 generation sets installed by Saudi Arabia’s Altaaqa. However, full operation of a 30MW Eneo power plant at Logbaba, also supplied by gas from GDC and with gensets from Altaaqa, has been put back by one month to April 2015 following shipping delays.

An initiative to bring local authorities, business and consumers together to develop the distributed supply of electricity to Cameroon’s many isolated communities was launched in Yaoundé on 10-13 March. The Invest’Elec initiative is supported by regulator Agence de Régulation du Secteur de l’Electricité (Arsel) and the European Union. They are seeking to establish a public-private partnership (PPP) model based on projects that use off-grid solutions to build integrated generation-distribution systems. The focus is on distributed mini-hydroelectric and biomass projects, seen as most appropriate to Cameroon’s resources base, and a few solar projects in the Far North region.

Operator Murphy Oil has pulled out of the offshore Ntem Block, transferring its 50% stake to Sterling Energy at no cost to Sterling. The Bamboo exploration well drilled in H1 2014 failed to find hydrocarbons, and the block is the subject of overlapping border claims by Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Force majeure was lifted on the block in January 2014 by agreement with Cameroon’s Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH) to enable drilling to go ahead, though the well was outside the affected area.

Canadian renewable energy-focused private equity firm JCM Capital expects to commission a 72MW solar photovoltaic (PV) park in Mbalmayo, southern Cameroon, in 2016. It will be the first renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) project in Cameroon and one of the first of a series of utility-scale solar projects that the company plans to build in Africa. JCM Capital is also developing a project in Nigeria.

London-based Golar LNG has signed a preliminary heads of agreement with Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH) and Perenco Cameroon for the development of a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project located 20km off the southern coast. The agreement is premised on the allocation of 500bcf of natural gas reserves from Perenco’s offshore Kribi fields, which will be exported to global markets via the Golar Hilli vessel, now under construction at the Keppel shipyard in Singapore. Golar will provide the liquefaction facilities and services under a tolling agreement to SNH and Perenco as owners of the upstream joint venture.