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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.

José Eduardo dos Santos has retired from the presidency – if not from heading the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) – but his family and allies retain a dominant hold over the Angolan economy, in a web of relationships that anti-corruption activists believe will persist despite João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço’s election. Portuguese Socialist member of the European Parliament Ana Maria Gomes on 7 September hosted prominent Angolan activist Rafael Marques in Brussels, where he made waves with his detailed criticism of contracts awarded for the 2,172MW Caculo Cabaça dam to companies linked to the former president’s daughter Isabel dos Santos.

Angola LNG Limited has entered into multi-year sales agreements for liquefied natural gas (LNG) with Vitol and with RWE Supply & Trading. Under the agreements, ALNG cargoes will be delivered to Vitol and RWE at destinations around the world. “Angola LNG is operating safely and reliably. This agreement is a further demonstration of Angola’s increasing role in global LNG, providing LNG all over the world and establishing relationships with a series of important international LNG market players,” Angola LNG Marketing said.

Among those counting on the incoming government maintaining stability are the international oil companies (IOCs) that have made Angola Africa’s leading oil exporter. IOCs produced 96.7% of the total average 1.72m b/d output in 2016, according to Sonangol’s 2016 annual report. French major Total’s large holding of operated blocks gave its assets by far the biggest overall production, 229.36m bbls out of a total 630.11m bbls of crude oil output last year, which was 3% lower than in 2015.

A major investment in hydroelectric power (HEP) plants promises to improve levels of energy access in a country with disconnected regional grids and a spotty record of project delivery. The government has set out an energy policy to 2025 that promises many more projects to come into service. These include the $4.3bn Laúca dam, which after four years of work celebrated the start-up of the first of six 334MW turbines on 4 August. State-funded Laúca’s remaining five turbines should come into operation in 2018, official reports said.

Critics abroad and poorer Angolans may question where billions of dollars of oil revenues have gone in past decades, but the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) prefers to trumpet its successes in the run-up to parliamentary elections on 23 August that will surely consecrate defence minister João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço as successor to President José Eduardo dos Santos. The government, forced to cut spending and borrow heavily as oil prices slumped to levels far below its budget calculations, is telling voters a better future beckons, with the announcement of progress on a string of new large hydroelectric power schemes (HEPs) and other infrastructure.

The 700MW Cambambe II hydro plant on the Kwanza River started up on 29 June, adding to the existing 4x65MW Cambambe I to give a total installed capacity of 960MW from the site south-east of Luanda.Angolan news agency Angop quoted energy and water minister João Baptista Borges as saying the $2bn project to expand and modernise plant I, build plant II and raise the height of the dam from 100 to 132 metres would provide a large amount of renewable energy.

Portuguese engineering firm Coba Consultores de Engenheria e Ambiente SA has been selected as the technical adviser for the 2,171MW Caculo Cabaça hydropower dam project on the Kwanza River, according to a decree issued by the office of President José Eduardo dos Santos on 25 April. Coba will oversee the engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning of the power plant’s electromechanical equipment, which will be carried out by a consortium called AIBC, formed by Dubai-based Anglostar Management DMCC, Brazil’s Intertechne Consultores SA, Israel’s Baran International and the Luanda-based Copia Group.

Sonangol has cancelled a tender issued in 2014 offering five onshore blocks in the Kwanza Basin and three in the Lower Congo Basin. Sonangol said the original aim of the bidding process was to offer upstream opportunities to Angolan entrepreneurs and companies but the sharp drop in the oil price meant the concessions were no longer viable. A statement published on Sonangol’s website on 17 May said that the original terms published for the tender would not be profitable for companies in the near future, and no change was possible without raising questions about the transparency of the bidding process.

GE on 2 May announced an order from Angola’s AE Energia for seven TM2500 mobile aeroderivative gas turbine generator sets for state power producer Empresa Pública de Produção de Electricidade (Prodel). The TM2500 units will be installed in Namibe, Huila and Cuando Cubango provinces and will be capable of providing the remaining 200MW of power for the government to achieve a targeted 1GW of electricity by end-2018.

Cobalt International Energy has filed two arbitration requests with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris seeking more than $2bn in compensation from Sonangol. In March 2017, Cobalt submitted a notice of dispute to Sonangol EP over the sale of the US company’s 40% holdings in blocks 20 and 21. In an operational update on 8 May, Cobalt said it had now filed a request for arbitration with the ICC against Sonangol EP for breach of the August 2015 purchase and sale agreement for the sale by Cobalt to Sonangol of the assets.

The UK’s Independent Power Corporation Plc (IPC) has launched a new power development company, QG Power Africa, in a joint venture with its existing partner, engineering consultancy Tomé International, and the $250m QG Africa Mezzanine LP investment fund managed by Quantum Global Group’s QG Investments Africa Management. Established to develop power plants across sub-Saharan Africa, QG Power will focus initially on Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. QG Africa Mezzanine will support the joint venture as strategic investor, while Swiss-based Tomé will be responsible for project management and IPC for the development of the power assets.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched an investigation into payments made to Sonangol by Cobalt International Energy for a research centre that has yet to materialise. In its 10-K annual filing on 14 March, Cobalt said that, on 13 March, the SEC had informed the company by telephone that it had initiated an informal inquiry related to the Sonangol Research and Technology Centre. Payments for the centre were a condition of a production-sharing contract signed by Cobalt and BP in December 2011.

Sonangol is seeking help from international oil companies (IOCs) to secure the release of two drilling rigs ordered from South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME). The rigs were ready for delivery last year, but Sonangol was unable to pay the balance of the purchase price. Sonangol said in a statement that work was ongoing to secure financing, select technical and operational partners, and identify new production opportunities to employ the drilling rigs in the Angolan market.

Chevron announced on 8 March that its Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (Cabgoc) subsidiary had begun producing oil and gas from the main production facility of the Mafumeira Sul project.Located 24km offshore Cabinda province in 60 metres of water, Mafumeira Sul is the second stage of development of the Mafumeira field in Block 0. It has a design capacity of 150,000 b/d of liquids and 350mcf/d of natural gas.