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Wärtsilä Corporation announced on 29 April that it had signed an operations and maintenance agreement with the 175MW Central Termica de Ressano Garcia plant. The Finnish company is supplying and installing 18 Wärtsilä 34SG engines to the plant, which is owned by Electricidade de Moçambique (51%) and South Africa’s Sasol New Energy (49%). Wärtsilä expects to complete installation work by May 2014. The plant will run on gas from the Sasol-operated Pande and Temane fields.

UK-based engineering, management and development consultant Mott MacDonald has consolidated its growth in South Africa by agreeing to buy Johannesburg-based engineering specialist PD Naidoo & Associates. Subject to Competition Commission of South Africa approval, the two companies will combine their southern African operations to create an 800 person-strong entity operating from 15 centres in South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique.

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has announced a new gas discovery in Offshore Area 1 of Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin, while the Kubwa well on Block L-7 offshore Kenya encountered only non-commercial oil shows. The Orca-1 discovery well in the Rovuma Basin was drilled to a total depth of 4,996 metres in water depths of 1,061 metres and found 58 metres of natural gas pay in a Palaeocene fan system.

The Kudu gas-to-power scheme is one of a number of strategic projects for which the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been attempting to drum up investment. Ten energy projects were included in a report detailing progress on selected infrastructure projects in the SADC Regional Infrastructure Development Master Plan Short-Term Action Plan, presented to the SADC-UK 2013 Prosperity Event in London on 13 March. The report was put together from interviews with project managers.

Aggreko and APR Energy’s big new contracts in Mozambique and Libya show that business is booming for operators which can offer governments short-term solutions to uncertain power supply, writes Daniel Marks.
Faith in the future of the market in costly temporary power solutions has been tested as developing countries have expressed their intention to move away from over-reliance on rented ‘interim’ solutions that threatened the financial viability of several African utilities in the late 2000s. But for investors, temporary power solutions seem to be a gift that keeps on giving.

China National Petroleum Corporation has paid $4.21bn for a 20% stake in Eni’s Offshore Area 4. The deal gives the Chinese company a significant share in the block’s massive gas reserves, and reduces Eni’s exposure to the development costs. CNPC’s presence in Africa is mostly onshore, in Sudan, Chad and Niger, though the company also has acreage offshore Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.

Electricidade de Moçambique (EdM) chairman Augusto de Sousa Fernando said on 18 February that a project to reinforce the power supply to Maputo and Matola will begin in June and that tender documents are being drafted. Work is expected to be completed by 2016.

Italy’s Eni says its Coral 3 delineation well has confirmed the potential of the Mamba Complex in Area 4 at 75tcf of gas in place. Coral 3, which is the eighth well drilled back to back in Area 4, was drilled in 2,035 metres of water and reached a total depth of 5,270 metres.

WesternGeco plans to start acquiring 32,000km of 2D seismic in April covering the country’s entire offshore area. The survey, on behalf of the National Petroleum Institute (INP), is thought to represent more 2D data than were acquired in the whole of Africa in 2012.

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has awarded multiple contracts to carry out front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the first phase of its planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Cabo Delgado Province. For the onshore element of the project, Bechtel, CB&I’s joint venture (JV) with Chiyoda Corporation, and the Fluor/JGC JV, will all carry out studies for a multi-train liquefaction plant with a nominal train capacity of 5m t/yr of LNG, and an overall LNG park plan that will allow for future expansion of the facility to approximately 50m t/yr.

Rio Tinto’s $3bn writedown from its Mozambique coal project offers a timely reminder of the infrastructure challenges of developing big projects in frontier countries. Rio Tinto bought Australia’s Riversdale Mining for $3.7bn in 2011, when other big mining companies were more cautious about bidding because of concerns about how to export the coal.

The Export-Import Bank of India announced in December that it had signed a line of credit (LoC) agreement with the government of Mozambique, dated 20 September 2012. The agreement makes available a $250m LOC to purchase goods, machinery, equipment and services from India to improve the quality of power supply in Mozambique.

Sasol New Energy has confirmed to African Energy that it has formed an investment company with Electricidade de Moçambique (EdM) to develop a 175MW modular gas engine power plant in Ressano Garcia. According to media reports, EdM has a 51% stake in the new company with Sasol holding the remaining 49%.

Eni and Anadarko signed a heads of agreement on 21 December establishing basic principles for the coordinated development of common natural gas reservoirs offshore Mozambique. The two companies will jointly plan and construct common onshore LNG liquefaction facilities in the northern Cabo Delgado Province, and Anadarko has given CB&I’s joint venture with Chiyoda Corporation a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for an onshore gas liquefaction facility.

Maputo became the destination of choice for IOCs, bankers and even hedge funds as the extent of Mozambique’s offshore gas potential became clear during 2012. The government is sifting proposals for a roster of gas-related projects that would anchor an export LNG industry but also the sort of big-ticket power, manufacturing and petrochemicals projects that could transform the economy