Search results

Cobalt International Energy said on 9 February that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had closed its investigation into Cobalt’s operations in Angola. The DoJ and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating Cobalt in 2011 in response to allegations of a connection between senior Angolan government officials and Nazaki Oil and Gas, an Angolan company that, until 2014, held a working interest alongside Cobalt on blocks 9 and 21 (AE 284/21).

The first turbine of the 750MW Soyo combined-cycle gas power plant in the far north on the Congolese border will be connected to the grid by the end of March, according to the Ministry of Energy and Water. The plant is being brought on line in phases and all four 187.5MW turbines should be operational by year-end. A 400km high-voltage transmission line between Soyo and Luanda is due to be completed in May. The cities of Nzeto, Tomboco, Mbanza Congo, Nóqui and Cuimba in the Zaire province will be the first to be connected to the grid.

Eni’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel Armada Olombendo has arrived at Block 15/06 ready for next year’s start-up of the East Hub development project. The vessel was built at Keppel shipyard in Singapore for Malaysian FPSO operator Bumi Armada. Eni held a naming ceremony there on 14 October.

Sonangol’s new board has said that a thorough investigation of the parastatal’s financial and management problems has revealed that the situation is worse than expected. With $1.6bn of debt payments due by year-end, the company has been in talks with international banks to secure financing. The company’s total debt is estimated at $9.85bn.A 1 December statement by the new board said Sonangol had failed to adjust its strategy to cope with the sharp reduction in revenue caused by the oil price crash.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) will provide up to $4.5bn of finance for the construction of the 2,171MW Caculo Cabaça dam on the Kwanza River, 19km downstream from the 2,070MW Laúca dam. The contract for what will be Angola’s biggest dam was signed in Beijing on 29 November by Angolan finance minister Archer Mangueira. The project will benefit from insurance cover by Sinosure to guarantee the investment, China’s largest in Angola to date.

The Southern African Power Pool Coordination Centre (SAPP CC) has issued a request for proposals from shortlisted consultants for transaction advisory services for the Angola-Namibia transmission interconnector project. The project is being sponsored by Angolan transmission company Rede Nacional de Transporte de Electricidade (RNT) and Namibia Power Corporation (NamPower), and coordinated by SAPP CC, with funding from the European Union, Germany’s KfW, the government of Norway and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The Angola-Namibia transmission interconnector is expected to link the electricity networks in northwestern Namibia and southern Angola.

Sonangol EP announced the start on 31 October of the early production system on the south wellhead platform of the Mafumeira Sul project. The Chevron-operated project is located about 24km off the coast of Malongo in water depths of about 60 metres. It includes a central processing facility, two wellhead platforms, 121km of subsea pipelines, 34 producing wells and 16 water injection wells. The facility has a design capacity of 150,000 b/d of liquids and 350mcf/d of natural gas per day.

A deepening economic crisis has forced the cancellation of this year’s Luanda International Fair (Filda), which had already been postponed from July to November. It will be the first cancellation in 33 years for the event, which was held throughout Angola’s civil war, which ended in 2002. The business weekly Expansão reported that the 33rd annual fair had been cancelled due to the “financial difficulties of the country”, which has been hard hit by a sharp fall in oil revenues.

Houston-based FMC Technologies has won a contract to provide subsea multiphase boosting pumps, manifolds and installation support services for Eni Angola’s Block 15/06 West Hub development project. “This is our second award for our new subsea multiphase boosting system and we are confident that this technology will be a critical and important part in supporting increased deep-water field recovery,” said senior vice-president of subsea technologies Tore Halvorsen. The West Hub development started production in December 2014 and more fields have steadily been added.

Filling of the reservoir for the Laúca dam in Malanje province is expected to start in January, and the first 334MW turbine is expected to come on stream by July. Project director Elias Estevão told state news agency Angop that engineering work in preparation for filling the reservoir was due for completion by year-end. Estevão said energy supply to the city of Malanje would be guaranteed by two transmission lines from Laúca and Cacuso town, passing via the Capanda dam through two substations, one of which still to be expanded and another to be built.

Sonangol has said it will not go ahead with the planned purchase of Cobalt International Energy’s 40% stake in blocks 20 and 21. The parastatal is undergoing restructuring to enable it to cope with a sharply lower oil price and announced after a meeting in June of its new board that it was suspending all talks relating to the sale of assets. An agreement for Cobalt to sell its stakes to Sonangol for $1.75bn was announced in August 2015. Cobalt said in its Q2 operational update that chief executive Tim Cutt met Sonangol board chair Isabel dos Santos and her executive team in Luanda in late July to discuss the sale.

The Ministry of Energy and Water has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Abu Dhabi industrial group Privinvest to introduce hydrokinetic power generation over the next decade. Privinvest affiliates CMN and Hydroquest design and manufacture turbines for use in rivers and the sea, harnessing energy from tides and flowing water.State power utility Empresa Pública de Produção de Electricidade (Prodel) and Privinvest have agreed to set up a joint venture company, which will initially manufacture and operate hydrokinetic energy schemes in Angola. The workload will be split between Angola and France.

New Sonangol chief executive Isabel dos Santos has suspended all talks relating to the sale of assets belonging to the Angolan state oil firm and stripped its legal department of most of its powers.A brief statement posted on Sonangol’s website following a 27 June meeting of the new board said the evaluation, negotiation and sale of any assets held by Sonangol and its subsidiaries had been suspended with immediate effect.

Sonangol has declared Cobalt Energy International’s Zalophus-1 well on Block 20 to be a commercial gas discovery. Sonangol said in a statement the Kwanza Basin well was drilled to a depth of 5,210 metres in 1,830 metres of water and encountered a 44-metre hydrocarbon column in the pre-salt. It estimated resources at 2.8tcf of gas, as well as liquids. A deal announced in August 2015 for Cobalt to sell blocks 20 and 21 to Sonangol for $1.75bn has yet to be finalised.

Angola has opted not to pursue an extended fund facility (EFF) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would have offered significant funding alongside tough conditionality, and will instead seek only technical assistance. “The president of the republic has informed the IMF of the government’s decision to continue their policy dialogue with the fund only within the context of the Article IV consultation and not through discussion concerning an EFF supported programme,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told a news briefing in Washington on 28 June.