Search results

General

Type

Sector

Regions

Countries

Sort options

206 results found for your search

Subscriber

Moribund Guinea licenceholder Hyperdynamics has announced the resignation of former UK foreign secretary Lord Owen from its board of directors. Lord Owen joined in September 2009 as the company sought to remake itself under new president and chief executive officer Ray Leonard.

Guinea
Free

Beleaguered state utility Electricité de Guinée (EDG) has announced the renewal of its 50MW emergency power contract with Aggreko, which accounted for a massive 36% of EDG’s total expenditure in H1 2014. The utility’s half-year results, released in late August, show that investment in generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure received only 4% of total H1 2014 spending. According to EDG, in H1 2014 it was able to offer some 350GWh of energy, some 25% of which was purchased from Aggreko, against estimated demand of 797GWh, representing a coverage rate of 44%. Aggreko’s contribution during the six-month period was 88,631MWh, providing a lifeline to the capital, Conakry, which suffers regular power outages, particularly in outlying areas.

Guinea
Issue 282 - 26 July 2014

DR Congo/Guinea: EITI compliant

Subscriber

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea have both been admitted as full members of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) at an EITI board meeting in Mexico City. “I congratulate the DRC for becoming a full member of the EITI family. Despite all the challenges facing the country, the Congolese people have been working together to bring transparency and accountability to the management of their natural resources,” said EITI board chair Clare Short. DRC’s candidate status was temporarily suspended on 18 April 2013, following the publication of the 2010 EITI Report, which was found to not meet the EITI requirements. The country has since addressed the issues that led to its suspension, an EITI statement said.

DR Congo | Guinea
Free

Hyperdynamics and AGR Well Management have reached a settlement in their dispute over cost overruns for the Sabu well offshore Guinea, three weeks before the case was due to open in London. AGR provided project management services for Hyperdynamics’ subsidiary SCS Corporation for the well in 2011-12. Under the settlement, SCS will receive $17.7m from an escrow account previously established by the companies. The net proceeds to SCS will be $15.6m after reconciliation of a joint interest account with block partner Dana Petroleum.

Guinea
Subscriber

Rio Tinto, Aluminium Corporation of China (Chinalco) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation have signed an investment framework with the government of Guinea to develop blocks 3 and 4 of the Simandou iron ore deposit, creating the largest combined iron ore and infrastructure project in Africa. A joint statement said the signing provided the legal and commercial foundation for the project. The investment framework will now be presented to parliament for ratification. Once it is ratified, the project partners will finalise a bankable feasibility study to confirm all the project parameters, including cost and timeline.

Guinea
Subscriber

Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz’s BSG Resources (BSGR) is preparing arbitration proceedings against the government of Guinea and President Alpha Condé, after Conakry revoked its licence for the Simandou iron ore deposit. BSGR said in a statement that it was initiating arbitration with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Guinea stripped BSGR and its joint venture partner Vale of their rights to part of Simandou in April after a government committee concluded that BSGR had paid bribes. BSGR has denied any wrongdoing.

Guinea
Issue 277 - 17 May 2014

Tullow lifts Guinea force majeure

Subscriber

Tullow has lifted its declaration of force majeure over its Guinea acreage. The declaration was linked to an investigation of potential violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by Tullow’s partner Hyperdynamics, the original holder of the concession. “Diligent efforts are being made to satisfy the conditions to resuming petroleum operations which include clarification that the US FCPA investigations of Hyperdynamics will not adversely affect Tullow’s operations under the PSC,” the US company said. Industry sources had questioned the grounds for a force majeure declaration and linked the move to Tullow’s desire to cut exploration spending.

Guinea
Subscriber

Efforts to improve co-ordination between Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire are gaining momentum, with plans for the Mano River Union (MRU) to hold a senior-level meeting to promote electricity interconnection, probably in Abidjan in June, MRU secretary-general Saran Daraba Kaba told African Energy. There is growing support for development of interconnections between the four states as part of the West African Power Pool (WAPP), Guinean finance minister Mohamed Diaré told a 4 April Belgium-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce meeting in Brussels.

Sierra Leone | Guinea | Liberia | Côte d'Ivoire
Subscriber

Having suddenly declared force majeure in Guinea, nearly six months after the US Department of Justice launched a corruption probe into its partner Hyperdynamics, Tullow is playing up its transparency credentials. Its annual report published on 24 March includes project-by-project reporting of payments, making it the first oil company to disclose such detail in every country in which it operates. The significance of this is huge. The American Petroleum Institute (API) in September 2012 sued the US Securities and Exchange Commission in an attempt to avoid disclosing project-level payments, and API members are lobbying against tougher reporting standards in the EU and elsewhere.

Guinea
Subscriber

Hyperdynamics Corporation said on 12 March that Tullow Oil had declared force majeure over its Guinea acreage. The announcement followed a guilty plea by French national Frédéric Cilins to obstructing a US criminal investigation in connection with a bribery probe into how Beny Steinmetz’s BSG Resources (BSGR) acquired mining rights in Guinea.On 30 September, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) issued a subpoena asking Hyperdynamics, the original licence holder, to produce documents relating to its business in Guinea. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a similar subpoena in January this year.

Guinea
Subscriber

Violent protests have again broken out in Conakry over power cuts as the government struggles to fund badly needed repairs to generation and transmission infrastructure. State utility Electricité de Guinée (EDG) said the latest problems were caused by damage to one of Conakry’s main transformer substations, which had led to power cuts in 13, mainly outlying, districts of the capital. “This transformer is a transformer substation. It’s different from the little distribution transformers situated in the districts whose capacity is no greater than 160kVA,” an EDG official explained.

Guinea
Subscriber

Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz and three fellow directors of his Guernsey-registered BSG Resources (BSGR) have filed a damages claim against London-based Global Witness at London’s High Court over violations of the Data Protection Act (DPA), following a decision by the UK Information Commissioner. They say that the NGO’s refusal to disclose personal information obtained during a long-running investigation of BSGR’s acquisition of mining rights in Guinea breaches their human and data protection rights. The dispute centres on BSGR’s controversial 2008 acquisition of the Simandou iron ore deposit in south-eastern Guinea, the largest undeveloped reserve in the world.

Guinea
Subscriber

Houston-based Hyperdynamics has warned of renewed cash problems as legal costs related to its Guinea operations loom. Tullow Oil took over as operator in the country’s offshore acreage earlier this year and will carry Hyperdynamics for up to $100m on its share of costs of a well planned for H1 2014, but the company is in dispute with AGR Well Management over cost overruns from the Sabu-1 dry well drilled in 2011, and is also under investigation by the US Department of Justice over potential breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (AE 263/18).

Guinea
Issue 266 - 25 November 2013

Regional: AfDB funds interconnection

Subscriber

The African Development Bank board approved a financing package on 6 November for the Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea (CLSG) electricity networks interconnection project. The total financing by the African Development Fund, Fragile States Facility and Nigeria Trust Fund amounts to €145m, representing roughly 40% of the total project cost. The project will secure power supply for the four Mano River Union member countries, and will be implemented between 2014 and 2017. The CLSG project involves the construction of about 1,400km of high voltage (225 kV) line to connect the national networks of the four countries.

Sierra Leone | Guinea | Liberia | Côte d'Ivoire
Subscriber

Hyperdynamics said on 30 September the US Department of Justice had issued a subpoena asking it to produce documents relating to its business in Guinea. “The company understands that the DoJ is investigating whether Hyperdynamics’ activities in obtaining and retaining the concession rights and its relationships with charitable organisations potentially violate the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or US anti-money laundering statutes,” Hyperdynamics said. Guinea’s resource contracts have been under scrutiny since President Alpha Condé took office in December 2011, and US investigators are taking the lead in another high-profile case.

Guinea