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Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable has given Spanish energy and environmental engineering group Abengoa a contract worth approximately €23m ($31m) for a new electricity transmission line. The contract, announced on 21 November, covers the engineering, design, construction, maintenance and commissioning of a 210km line in northern Morocco. The project consists of three 400kV sections: an 80km section between Matmata and Msoun, 80km between Msoun and Gteter and 5km between Bourdim and Jerada. The line is expected to come into operation in 2016 and is designed to improve power supply in northern Morocco as well as interconnection with the Algerian grid.

Australia’s Woodside Energy has continued its advance in Africa with the signing of a reconnaissance licence for the Rabat Ultra-Deep Offshore area. The 36,737km2 block, in water depths of 1,700 to 4,400 metres, lies just west of Chariot Oil and Gas’ Rabat Deep Offshore licence, where Woodside agreed to take a 25% interest in July. The work commitment under the 12-month reconnaissance licence includes a 2D seismic survey. Woodside made a rapid series of African acquisitions around a decade ago before pulling back in 2007 following disappointing results in Kenya, Libya and Mauritania. This year, the company has returned to the region, with acquisitions in Tanzania, Gabon and Cameroon, as well as Morocco.

Local distributors, organised into the Groupement des Pétroliers du Maroc (GPM), are lobbying for the end to subsidies, announced by the government last January and scheduled for 1 January 2015, to be rolled out over three years instead. The government has surprised many observers by pushing for a full end to subsidies by the Caisse de Compensation, rather than maintaining some support for politically sensitive diesel prices. Subsidies have proved a heavy burden for the state budget; it is calculated that, following reforms, subsidies in 2014 would be around MD28bn ($3.1bn), compared to MD37.5bn if the old system had remained.

Operator Genel Energy is to plug and abandon the SM-1 well on the Sidi Moussa permit. Genel said on 13 November the well had been drilled to 2,825 metres sub-sea and encountered oil in fractured and brecciated cavernous Upper Jurassic carbonates. In the course of well control operations, 26 degree API oil was produced to surface, but the company said a testing programme over the same interval had failed to produce oil at sustainable rates “potentially as a consequence of the reservoir damage suffered during drilling and well control operations”.

In a potentially major step forward for private generators, the government has approved an increase in the amount of electricity that companies other than traditional state monopoly Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) may generate and transport through the national grid. Pending final approvals, Law 54-14 will allow private producers (and other state companies) to generate over 300MW, mainly to supply their own needs. The previous limit was 50MW – which remains the maximum allowable unless an investor plans to generate (potentially from several sites) over 300MW, in a move to focus developments on larger industrial users.

Morocco’s Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (Onhym) is playing down reports of an offshore discovery by Genel Energy with the Sidi Moussa 1 well. Partner San Leon Energy on 20 October said the well had reached a total depth of 2,825 metres and encountered oil during drilling operations. Onhym head Amina Benkhadra told African Energy oil traces had been found in secondary layers, but more work was needed to confirm a significant find. She said Onhym was putting in place plans to partner international oil companies if one of the many companies exploring in Morocco made a discovery.

The World Bank Group on 30 September approved a $519m package for the 350MW second phase of the Noor-Ouarzazate concentrated solar power (CSP) project. The 160MW first phase is being developed by Saudi company Acwa Power. The financing package comprises $400m from the World Bank and $119m from the Clean Technology Fund. Phase II involves the construction of two separate power plants: 150MW-200MW Noor II, a parabolic trough CSP facility, and 100MW-150MW Noor III, a CSP tower. Land has been acquired for both plants.

The Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) has announced that prequalification will take place in December for the 350MW Abdelmoumen pumped storage facility, part of the Station de Transfert d’Energie par Pompage (Step) project. Expressions of interest have been invited for Abdelmoumen twice before, in 2008 and 2013. The project will be located around 70km north-east of Agadir in Taroudant Province, and will generate power as well as reinforcing the existing 460MW Afourer facility, which began operating ten years ago.

The African Development Bank (AfDB)’s Africa50 fund, which will invest in infrastructure projects, has been incorporated and will be headquartered in Casablanca Finance City, Morocco. The fund will operate independently on a commercial for-profit basis. “Africa50 has a double bottom line: to achieve commercial returns and to make an impact in building the Africa of the future,” said AfDB president Donald Kaberuka. The fund aims to take an integrated approach to investing in infrastructure projects all along the value chain through business areas in project finance and project development.

Tangiers Petroleum has opted to withdraw from the Tarfaya Offshore block, its sole asset, following the unsuccessful Tao-1 well. The company will either transfer its 25% stake to operator Galp Energia, or withdraw when the licence expires in February 2015. Tangiers said the well had gone over budget but it had paid its $18.56m share of the cost, leaving it with just A$1.25m in cash. The company was previously headed by former Woodside Energy vice president Eve Howell, who resigned in February amid opposition from a group of shareholders to a planned merger with Jacka Resources.

State utility Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) has finally opened bids for 850MW of power to be generated at five sites, a key element in the Integrated Wind Energy Programme (PIEE), which aims to generate 2GW by 2020. Decisions on the 850MW element (tender no SP 40 311) have been delayed while ONEE has put together financing and bidders have contested some of the tough conditions requested for the build-own-operate-transfer scheme. These include the call for local manufacturing to be included in bids, notably from small and medium-size companies, along with technology transfer.

The UK is planning a first British Renewable Energy Trade Mission to Morocco, on 10-11 November, in a push to raise the number of British firms working in the kingdom. UK trade envoy to Morocco Lord Sharman and National Agency for the Development of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (Aderee) head Saïd Mouline will be among keynote speakers at a seminar. UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) Casablanca representative Fatima-Zahra Kerdoum said other countries had moved more quickly to win orders from the renewables boom.

Plans to generate electricity from landfill waste are finally taking off, with a pilot project in Casablanca’s Sidi Bernoussi district operational and Fes planning to generate up to 50MW, producing 30% of the city’s needs, within ten years.Rabat-based Ozone Environnement et Services (OES), which has contracts to collect household waste across Morocco, has signed an agreement with the state Société d’Investissement Energétique (SIE) to develop a MD47m ($5.5m) project in Fes. SIE will provide 25% of the financing, with the private developer finding the rest.

San Leon Energy has increased its stake in two licences by acquiring shares from Petromaroc, the former Longreach Oil and Gas. San Leon has acquired Petromaroc’s 1.5% interest in the offshore Sidi Moussa licence, where operator Genel Energy is drilling the SM-1 well on the Nour prospect. Petromaroc has also transferred its 22.5% net working interest in the San Leon-operated Tarfaya Onshore licence. San Leon is in the process of obtaining an extension of the current period and a revised work programme.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation private finance arm is investing up to $100m in Saudi developer Acwa Power, which “will help the company significantly increase the amount of power it generates from renewable sources and meet growing energy demand throughout the Middle East and North Africa [and] the southern cone of Africa”, the IFC said in a statement issued in Riyadh on 7 July. In Morocco, the investment was seen as providing further essential support for fast-growing Acwa Power, the flagship contractor for Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen)’s Ouarzazate solar power complex.