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The Club de Paris (CdP) group of creditor governments raised the thorny question of debt owed by Chad to trader Glencore – whose similar debts to Republic of Congo are also on the agenda for international debt restructuring (see below) – at a 15 July meeting, which also formalised the forgiveness of some Sudanese debt (see below).

Former Tullow Oil chief executive Paul McDade has fashioned a new company to take advantage of the changing landscape in the continent’s oil and gas sector, he tells James Gavin.

ExxonMobil Corporation has relinquished its interest in Ghana’s Deepwater Cape Three Points (DWCTP) Block – until recently seen as highly promising offshore acreage, on-trend with the US major’s big Atlantic play in Guyana – and entered talks to sell its upstream and midstream assets in Chad and Cameroon, where more than a decade ago development of the Chad-Cameroon export pipeline was a major issue in development policy circles.

The Chinese-owned West African Oil Pipeline Benin Company (Wapco Benin) and the government in Cotonou have announced a construction start for the delayed Niger-Benin Export Pipeline (NBEP), which the partners said had been held up for months by the coronavirus pandemic. The 1,982km, 20-inch diameter pipeline will carry crude from the Agadem Rift Basin (ARB) fields in Niger to Benin’s Atlantic oil terminal in Sèmè-Kraké port.

Idriss Déby Itno’s mid-April death fighting rebels in the Kanem region ended four decades of IDI’s authoritarian rule, but was immediately replaced by a Transitional Military Council (CMT) led by the late president’s son, 37-year-old Mahamat ‘Kaka’s Idriss Déby (AE 437/32).

Off-grid operations have proved resilient in the face of Covid-19 challenges, as major investors and financial institutions expand their support for electricity access away from national grids. But scaling up local businesses so that distributed energy solutions can reach their potential remains a huge challenge, leading industry players told a virtual African Investment Exchange (AIX) meeting.

 The World Bank Group (WBG) is considering an International Development Association (IDA) grant worth $280m for the Chad Energy Access Scale Up Project. The transaction is expected to be submitted to the board in December. The project proposes a three-phase approach. The first phase covers rehabilitation and expansion of existing mini-grids and construction of new grids, deployment of standalone solar systems, and construction of utility-scale solar PV plants.

Taiwan’s CPC Corporation held a ceremony on 1 December to mark the arrival of the first cargo of crude from Chad’s Oryx concession at the Dalin refinery. The first cargo of oil from the Oryx concession, a tanker carrying about 950,000 barrels of crude oil, departed from the Kribi terminal in Cameroon in October 2020 and arrived in Taiwan at the end of November.

The G5 Sahel countries have received new support for solar generation in the Desert to Power scheme promoted by the African Development Bank (AfDB). The AfDB’s stated ambition is for the G5 Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Mali and Niger – to harness their potential to create “the world’s largest solar zone”. The AfDB aims to increase on- and off-grid solar generation capacity by 10GW, to transform the livelihoods of some 250m people across the 11-state Sahel region.

ZIZ Energie has started civil works for a 2.5MW solar and 5MWh storage mini-grid in Mongo in central Chad. Work on the hybrid project began in October 2020 and the project is expected to come online by Q2 2021, supplying the city of 70,000 people 500km east of N’Djamena. ZIZ told African Energy it was the first company to use a new licensing regime introduced by law No 036 of August 2019.

President Idriss Deby Itno on 21 November launched construction of a 100MW solar PV project in N’djamena’s Gaoui district. The project will be developed in two 50MW stages by Austria’s Merl Solar Technologies on a build, own, operate and transfer basis. It will also include a 10MWh storage system and a 33/90kV substation.

Dutch development bank FMO has agreed a €500,000 ($598,000) convertible loan with power company ZIZ Energie to fund its operations in Chad. FMO joins investment company Energy Access Ventures (EAV) in backing ZIZ in a €2m funding round. EAV announced it was investing in the company earlier this year.

Argentina’s Alcaal Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 6 August for a 200MW solar/battery power plant in N’djamena. Under the terms of the MoU, Alcaal will carry out studies for the project, to be built in the Gassi district, east of the capital.

he World Bank has approved $385m in International Development Association (IDA) financing for the Cameroon-Chad Interconnection Project, which aims to interconnect the southern and northern power systems of Cameroon, enable electricity trade between Cameroon and Chad, and increase access to electricity in N’Djamena.

President Paul Biya has signed two decrees enabling the minister of economy, planning and regional development to sign two financing agreements with the African Development Bank (AfDB) totalling CFA147.85bn ($24m) to finance the interconnection of power networks in Cameroon and Chad. The financing consists of CFA142.93bn from the AfDB and CFA4.92bn from the African Development Fund, the bank’s concessional financing window.