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Bids were due by 15 May for a European Development Fund-financed programme to improve the corporate governance of power utility Zesco. Zesco has obtained European Investment Bank funding for two projects – upgrading the existing 220kV Kafue-Muzuma-Livingstone transmission line to 330 kV, and the Itezhi Tezhi hydro project and related transmission infrastructure. According to the tender notice: “Zesco has expressed its desire and commitment to strengthen good corporate governance and compliance procedures within the company.” The winning consultant will help the utility develop and implement a corporate governance framework.

Zambia
Issue 277 - 17 May 2014

Zambia: Swala offered Block 44

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Australia’s Swala Energy has been offered exploration rights to Block 44, one of three blocks it applied for last year. Once Swala accepts the offer, the licence will be formally awarded by the Ministry of Energy. The company also applied for Block 31, which includes part of Lake Tanganyika and was previously licensed to Rapid African Energy, and Block 42. Block 44 covers 6,000km2 on the margins of the Karoo-aged Kariba Basin in southern Zambia. The basin was explored by Mobil in the late 1980s and a large volume of 2D seismic data was acquired at the time but no wells were drilled.

Zambia
Subscriber

Australia’s African Energy Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Zesco to supply 300MW of baseload electrical power from its Sese Coal & Power Project into the national grid in southern Zambia. The Perth-based company will carry out a desktop study to evaluate preferred options for the transmission and integration of the power. Zesco will provide access to its technical capability and information to assist with the study, and Australian investment and advisory firm Maysen and Borowski Investments will support the companies.

Zambia
Subscriber

The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) has raised power tariffs for mining companies by 28.8% from 2 April after almost three years of dispute involving state power utility Zesco and mining companies. Most mining companies in Zambia buy electricity via the private Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC). Zesco was pushing to increase power tariffs for mines to $0.078/kWh from $0.0531/kWh but the ERB only allowed a rise to $0.068/kWh. The ERB has raised mining tariffs twice since 2007 – a period in which non-mining tariffs increased by a cumulative 96% on average.

Zambia
Issue 274 - 01 April 2014

Frontier Resources: Farm-ins sought

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Frontier Resources has established an online data room with the aim of farming out an interest in its Zambia and Namibia licences, following encouraging results from evaluations last year. The next phase of operations will include the acquisition of new block-wide airborne gravity and magnetic data in Zambia, and an additional soil gas sampling survey and 2D seismic data acquisition in Namibia. “The results of the recent geological, geophysical and geochemical work in both Namibia and Zambia have been very encouraging, and the company now considers it timely to attract industry partners to join in our ongoing exploration activities,” said chief executive Jack Keyes.

Namibia | Zambia
Subscriber

Standard Chartered’s Private Equity Africa division has invested $57m in Zambian Energy Corporation, the controlling shareholder of Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC), giving it a 25.8% equity stake. CEC is an independent transmission and distribution company which supplies power to mines in Zambia’s Copperbelt and transmits power for national power utility Zesco. CEC recently established CEC Africa (CECA) as a vehicle for power infrastructure investments outside Zambia. In Nigeria, CECA has acquired a controlling interest in the Abuja electricity distribution company (disco) and a 20% stake in the 600MW Shiroro hydro plant.

Zambia
Subscriber

While the government is making headlines with plans finally to develop the 1,600MW Batoka Gorge project with Zimbabwe, and by bringing further units of the eventual 320MW Kariba North Bank Extension Power Station on line, state utility Zesco is looking to a new generation of independent power producers (IPPs) and other projects, and a major investment in transmission infrastructure. This will confirm Zambia’s transition from dependence on imports to generating electricity for export, as well as meeting growing domestic demand.

Zambia
Subscriber

Zesco on 5 March signed a $163m loan agreement with Sweden’s Nordea Bank AB and Standard Bank of South Africa for a transmission infrastructure project. The project will connect the whole of North-Western Province and parts of Western Province to the national grid, allowing isolated diesel generators to be removed and opening up the possibility of future interconnection with the Angolan grid. Zesco spends more than $6m/yr procuring diesel fuel, Zesco managing director Cyprian Chitundu said at the signing ceremony.

Zambia
Subscriber

Zambian energy minister Christopher Yaluma is hoping construction work will start on the 1,600MW Batoka Gorge hydro project by year-end. Developers are showing strong interest in the project on the Zambezi River downstream from Victoria Falls, whose development will be carried out by a special purpose vehicle to be formed by the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), which was established to operate and maintain the Kariba Dam. Yaluma said that, since Zambia and Zimbabwe had revived the Batoka project, it had attracted an “unprecedented number of unsolicited expressions of interest”.

Zambia | Zimbabwe
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South African freight and logistics provider Grindrod has announced plans to work with Zambia’s Northwest Rail Company (NWR) to build, operate and maintain a new 590km railway from Chingola in the heart of the old Zambian Copperbelt to the Angolan border. NWR is run by former Zambian vice-president Enoch Kavindele. The Zambian government granted the company the right to build and run the railway in July 2006, and the agreement with Grindrod will enable the parties to conclude a bankable feasibility study.

Zambia
Subscriber

Zesco has drawn up plans to spend some $5bn over the next five years to expand its generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure and is now looking at ways to raise funds. But donor concerns are being raised about the sustainability of Zambia’s debt burden. Years of underinvestment in the power sector mean generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure has not kept pace with rising demand. State utility Zesco plans to spend an estimated $660m from its balance sheet this year to upgrade and expand power facilities, and a further 26.4bn kwacha ($4.7bn) over the next five years.

Zambia
Subscriber

The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) has commissioned a cost of service study covering the entire electricity supply industry. The study is expected to take two years and will discover the cost of providing power to different consumer categories. A 15-year demand forecast and least-cost generation, transmission and distribution plans will also be produced. The study will be used by the regulator to help provide a ‘migration path’ towards cost-reflective tariffs as well as to inform policy decisions and gauge power companies’ revenue requirements.

Zambia
Subscriber

India’s Nava Bharat Ventures Ltd expects to reach financial close on $560m long term debt financing for a $800m, 300MW coal mouth power project in early 2014. The African Development Bank (AfDB) approved a $150m loan for the project on 2 October (AE 263/7) and it is also supported by an export credit agency (ECA) facility from China’s Sinosure. It will burn low-grade coal which is currently at risk of spontaneous combustion while lying dormant at the Maamba colliery. Financial close had been expected in October but has been delayed as the Chinese sanction process is taking longer than expected.

Zambia
Issue 267 - 05 December 2013

Zambia: Bowleven awarded three blocks

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Edinburgh-based Bowleven has been granted three exploration blocks in Zambia’s recent licensing round. The previously unlicensed blocks 25, 28 and 29 lie in the Luangwa Rift Valley, a north-east to south-west trending rift basin which last saw exploration in the 1980s. The initial exploration period includes a minimum work programme estimated at $500,000. The government held the bid round after issuing default notices to companies that had failed to carry out exploration work (AE 263/13). Bowleven also has Kenyan Block 11B with Chris Matchette-Downes’ Adamantine Energy, where an airborne geophysical survey is almost complete, as well as its core assets in Cameroon, where development has been slowed by the need to find a market for the gas associated with the oil.

Zambia
Subscriber

Deputy mines, energy and water development minister Charles Zulu has told parliament that Sweden’s Eltel Networks has signed a contract with the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (Zesco) worth $150m. The contract will see the company connect all districts in North-Western Province and Lukulu in Western Province to the national grid on a 132kV overhead network by 2015. Work is expected to begin before end-2013.

Zambia