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Huge excitement and great public debate has accompanied the Jubilee field discovery. But 120,000 b/d isn’t going to transform the lives of 23m people, and with elections looming, the government is already looking to other players to replicate Tullow Oil’s success.

Southern Africa’s power crisis and chronic capacity shortages throughout the continent have consolidated the boom for short-term providers of generation in a host of sub-Saharan economies. With big profits to be made, the ‘interim solutions’ marketplace is getting fuller and more varied, writes François Misser.

Brazil’s BNDES development bank is financing a project to grow sugar cane in northern Ghana to produce ethanol for export to Sweden. Ghana’s Daily Graphic said planting on 27,000 hectares of land at Makango in the Northern Region would start in September.

Last October’s $750m Eurobond, the first such issue in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa, was heavily oversubscribed; so was a $200m five-year bond for Ghana Telecommunications, raised only three weeks later.

Kosmos Energy has signed agreements with Atwood Oceanics and Noble Energy to use the moored semi-submersible rig Atwood Hunter for its deep-water drilling programme offshore West Africa

CBM pilot drilling; EEPCo seeks Gilgel Gibe 3 links;Accra looks to nuclear power; Gurara Falls HEP scheme; Rural electrification tenders; Gariep hydro rehab; AfDB financing

Jubilee field operator Tullow Oil has announced another success with the Mahogany-2 appraisal well on the West Cape Three Points licence, which flowed at a test rate of 5,200 b/d of 36-degree API gravity oil and 5.3m ft3/d of associated gas. The well was drilled to a total depth of 3,443 metres by the Songa Saturn drillship in water depths of 1,080 metres (AE 138/15).

Former GNPC head jailed; Winfield wins approvals for refinery project; Abu Dhabi plans refinery; Chemical distribution deal; Petronas puts refinery on hold

ENERISQ: Nigeria partnership; GALP: Portuguese buying Shell operations in three countries

A groundbreaking ceremony for a Ghana-Togo power interconnection scheduled for 10 May had to be postponed at the last minute.

Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) leader John Atta Mills has promised to increase generation capacity to 5,000MW from the present 1,600MW if he wins December’s presidential election. Mills made the pledge in a speech to members of the Association of Ghana Industries in Accra.

Bahamas-based Global Environmental Energy Corporation has agreed to extend Freedom Renewable Energy’s licence to negotiate a contract with Ghana for the supply of Global’s Chinese-made biosphere systems to turn solid waste into energy.

The Ministry of Energy is implementing a programme to provide up to 50% grant financing for rural dwellers to purchase solar home systems and solar lanterns.

Generating considerable analyst interest, Tullow Oil has said the Mahogany-2 appraisal well on the West Cape Three Points licence has intersected a significant column of light oil.

The high global cost of oil and gas exploration has slowed the pace of work on some of the Gulf of Guinea’s smaller plays, and several blocks secured at the height of industry excitement about the region are now changing hands as the original licensees review their positions. Many of the newcomers are Australians, originally tempted into Africa’s east coast and now looking west. For a number of players,