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QatarEnergy’s pursuit of large minority stakes in African acreage has continued with a 40% interest in Mauritania Block C-10, bought from Shell in another sign of the ambitious Gulf player’s strategy of building up a sizeable upstream footprint around the globe.

 London-listed Tullow Oil reported a rise in revenues and profits in its full-year results issued in early March and sought to focus attention on its prospects in Ghana and Kenya instead of its high levels of debt and ongoing litigation issues. African Energy takes a closer look at Tullow’s prospects for 2023 and beyond.

Niamey hopes the construction of a pair of thermal power plants with total capacity of 111MW will break its dependency on Nigerian electric power, but little is known about Moulaye El Arby Baba Aïnina, the Mauritanian businessman with mining and cement processing interests in Guinea who has financed the $130m investment.

Shell has underlined Mauritania’s rising profile by signing a production sharing contract for offshore Block C2. While one supermajor plans to start initial exploration, BP and partners have agreed their preferred development concept for phase two of the Mauritania/Senegal Greater Tortue Ahmeyim integrated LNG project – finally moving that scheme towards a final investment decision, write James Gavin and Marc Howard.

AIM-listed Chariot Energy expects to complete its Nour green hydrogen project feasibility study in the next 18 months. Partnered with Total Eren, Chariot expects the giga-scale scheme eventually to produce some of the world’s cheapest GH2, in the increasingly fashionable Mauritanian development space also being promoted by companies including CWP Global and BP, writes John Hamilton.

Australian Securities Exchange-listed Aura Energy has signed a 30-year convention with the Mauritanian government for the greenfield Tiris uranium and vanadium project.

The floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) for the $4.8bn Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) liquefied natural gas (LNG) development has set sail from Qidong, project partners BP and Kosmos Energy have announced.

Sultan Al-Jaber’s appointment to preside over the end-year COP28 climate talks in Dubai brings a storied United Arab Emirates official to global prominence. His leadership in renewables developer Masdar and other UAE sustainable energy initiatives is welcome, but Al-Jaber’s powerful role as head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has added to climate campaigners’ fears that big hydrocarbons producers will take the COP process even further off track, write Jon Marks and African Energy staff.

Kosmos Energy reported progress on its core development projects in West Africa in a Q3 2022 results release on 7 November. The New York Stock Exchange- and London Stock Exchange-listed firm said it was advancing several gas opportunities, which it now believes will drive growth beyond 2024 as it continues to increase the weighting of natural gas in its traditionally crude-heavy portfolio.

BP has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Mauritanian government to explore the potential for large-scale production of green hydrogen (GH2), with BP to evaluate the technical and commercial feasibility of projects in the country. The deal was signed at the United Nations climate conference (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh.

Mauritania's petroleum, mines and energy minister Abdessalam Ould Mohammed Saleh has signed a partnership agreement for the 10GW Nour green hydrogen (GH2) project. The agreement paves the way for a feasibility study and offtaker assessment.

The Mauritanian government gave an elevated estimate of over 50tcf of gas reserves at the offshore BirAllah field the day before operator BP confirmed, on 12 October, that it had signed an exploration and production-sharing contract (PSC) for the acreage.

A typhoon in Qidong, China on 15 September unmoored the recently-completed floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for phase one of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) liquefied natural gas (LNG) development. The vessel will process gas from four ultra-deep-water wells at the export project’s 2.45m t/yr first phase.

The floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) Phase I has been completed and “will soon sail to Mauritania and Senegal”, France’s Technip Energies NV said on 12 September.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on 15 September between Morocco’s Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (Onhym), Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to progress the 7,000km Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) project.