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Total Gabon has exercised its pre-emption right to acquire the 50% interest in the Baudroie-Mérou licence held by Mitsubishi Petroleum Development Company (MPDC). Total Gabon owns the remaining 50% interest and at completion of the transaction will become 100% owner and operator of the licence. Total said the transaction had a value of $40m and was subject to approval by the authorities.

France’s Eranove Group in partnership with Gabon’s state investment fund Fonds Gabonais d’Investissements Stratégiques (FGIS) invites expressions of interest by 30 April from engineering firms to prepare detailed design studies and assist with the project management for the Dibwangui hydropower project on the Louetsi River in the south-eastern region of Ngounié. The low-head project, with an estimated installed capacity of around 15MW, is to be developed by Eranove on a build-own-operate-transfer basis under a 30-year concession signed with FGIS in October 2016.

Pura Vida Energy has announced the sudden departure of chief executive Damon Neaves. Non-executive chairman Simon Eley will take over temporarily and the board will seek a replacement before a planned three-well drilling programme on the Nkembe Block offshore Gabon. Pura Vida is looking for a partner to come up with around $17m for the drilling programme. On 17 March, the Australian Securities Exchange suspended the company’s shares from trading for failing to lodge half-year accounts for the six months to 31 December.

Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to sell its onshore assets for $587m to Assala Energy Holdings, a Carlyle Group company run by former Tullow Oil and Perenco executives, as part of its divestment programme following the BG acquisition.The sale involves all of Shell’s onshore oil and gas operations and related infrastructure in Gabon, namely five operated fields (Rabi, Toucan/Robin, Gamba/Ivinga, Koula/Damier and Bende/M’Bassou/Totou), shares in four non-operated fields (Atora, Avocette/M’Boukou, Coucal and Tsiengui West) and the onshore pipeline system from Rabi to Gamba and the Gamba Southern export terminal.

Following its acquisition of Harvest Natural Resources’ 66.7% stake, Norway’s BW Offshore has signed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire a further 25% in the Dussafu production-sharing contract from Panoro Energy subsidiary Pan-Petroleum Gabon (AE 340/1). BW will pay Pan-Petroleum $12m in cash and provide a sellers’ credit of up to $12.5m to fund capital spending for Pan-Petroleum’s retained interest through to first oil. Total gross spending to reach first oil in 2018 is estimated at $150m.

Total has rationalised its Gabon operations with an agreement for the sale of stakes and the transfer of operatorship in various mature assets to Perenco. The agreement includes the sale of Total’s 100%-owned affiliate Total Participations Petrolières Gabon, which holds interests in ten fields. In addition, Total Gabon, in which Total holds 58.28%, has announced the sale of its interests in five fields and the Rabi-Coucal-Cap Lopez pipeline network. The total value of the transactions is around $350m before adjustments, and the production divested by Total represents around 13,000 b/d.

Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas and Pura Vida Energy have decided not to enter into the next phase of the Mazagan permit and have agreed to withdraw from the block. Freeport will give Pura Vida $7m in cash and a quantity of drilling equipment as settlement for the second well obligation under their January 2013 farm-in agreement. A first well drilled on the permit in 2015 failed to find hydrocarbons (AE 307/18). Pura Vida said it intended to focus on its Nkembe Block offshore Gabon, which contains the Loba discovery, and had shipped the equipment there.

Gabon has replaced its oil minister as part of a larger cabinet shuffle. Pascal Houangni Ambouroué, previously deputy economy minister, will replace Etienne Dieudonne Ngoubou, who was appointed in January 2014. Ambouroué was the youngest minister in the government when he was appointed to the cabinet in October 2016, aged 40. Before that, he spent a decade in international finance, including stints with BNP Paribas, Natexis and Crédit Agricole. He then joined the central African stock exchange, the Bourse des Valeurs Mobilières d’Afrique Centrale, where he became director-general in January 2012.

BW Offshore has agreed to buy Harvest Natural Resources’ stake in the Dussafu Block offshore southern Gabon for $32m in cash. Harvest owns a 66.667% interest in the Dussafu production-sharing contract, while the remaining 33.333% interest is owned by Pan-Petroleum Gabon, a subsidiary of Oslo-listed Panoro Energy. BW has entered a memorandum of understanding with Pan-Petroleum relating to the proposed acquisition of a further 25% interest in Dussafu for $12m in cash subject to the closing of the Harvest transaction, and is also in discussions with the Gabon Oil Company for its participation.

Spectrum has begun the first of three multi-client 3D seismic acquisition programmes offshore Gabon in preparation for future licensing rounds. On 31 December, Spectrum started acquisition of the 10,000km2 Gryphon 3D survey in southern Gabon. Spectrum said the survey had attracted strong industry funding and was expected to be completed in early Q3 2017. A further 5,000km2 3D survey over open acreage in northern Gabon, and an additional 3,000km2 3D survey offshore central Gabon will start in Q1 and Q2 respectively. Gravity and magnetic data will also be acquired.

France’s Eranove is to design, finance, build and operate two hydropower plants totalling nearly 90MW under 30-year concessions signed with state investment fund Fonds Gabonais d’Investissements Stratégiques (FGIS). Under the agreements signed on 21 October but announced in November, the West African-focused power and water utility is to develop the Ngoulmendjim storage plant with an installed capacity of 73MW and estimated average output of 500GWh/yr on the Komo River, about 125km east of Libreville, and the 15MW Dibwangui facility on the Louetsi River in the south-eastern Ngounié region. The smaller plant is expected to produce around 90GWh/yr.

Vaalco Energy has agreed to buy the 3.23% stake in the Etame Marin permit owned by Japan’s Sojitz. This acquisition is expected to boost Vaalco’s net production by nearly 11% with effect from 1 August. Vaalco will fund the acquisition with cash and an additional $5m of loan capacity available under a new term loan agreement announced in early July with the International Finance Corporation. Vaalco chief executive Steve Guidry said the company believed the block had significant upside potential remaining. “We have identified at least 17 future drilling opportunities we can pursue when prices recover that we estimate could include about 65m barrels of gross unrisked recoverable contingent resources,” he said.

CGG has early data available from more than 25,000km2 of new 3D multi-client seismic acquired to support Gabon’s 11th licensing round. CGG said a fast-track pre-stack time-migrated dataset for the survey over available and licensed blocks in the South Basin was available, along with sample pre-stack depth reverse time-migrated (RTM) data in one area. The final RTM for the whole of the survey area will be available later this summer.

US independent Vaalco Energy has postponed routine maintenance work on its Etame Marin facilities until 2017 to save cash. The company said a planned maintenance turnaround for the Etame field was completed in February. Inspections showed no need for further maintenance “and all facilities were deemed to be in good operating condition. As a result, the company will defer its planned September 2016 turnaround until 2017,” Vaalco said.

The government has presented a bill to parliament that would remove the monopoly of power and water utility Société d’Energie et d’Eau du Gabon (SEEG) and open up both sectors to private investment.France’s Veolia, which owns 51% of SEEG, signed a 20-year concession contract in 1997 with the Gabonese state, which owns the other 49%.