Search results

Multilaterals lined up to voice support for Masen’s ground-breaking CSP scheme at Ouarzazate, ahead of the global climate conference in Durban. With other solar schemes also reporting progress, Morocco’s aspirations to become a leading renewables producer are moving ahead, writes Jon Marks

Hélios Energie chief executive Karim Megherbi told a mid-November workshop in Brussels that the French solar company had lined up a pipeline of 100MW of photovoltaic (PV) projects in sub-Saharan

African Petroleum Corporation has snapped up two Senegalese blocks lying either side of its Gambia acreage, increasing its footprint in a region otherwise dominated by bigger players.

The current managers of Libya’s oil sector should not make hasty decisions about its structure, says former National Oil Corporation chairman D R Shukri Ghanem. Many of the debates about the creation of a ministry separate from the National Oil Corporation (NOC) had been going on for

Total inaugurated the Pazflor development on Block 17 on 22 November with a ceremony attended by petroleum minister José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, Sonangol

South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the 40-50GW Grand Inga hydro project during a 12 November visit to Lubumbashi by President Jacob Zuma

Proposals for a refinery at Coega in the Eastern Cape have been thrown into doubt by the National Planning Commission’s lack of enthusiasm for a new refinery, writes Adrian J Browne. A new report from the National Planning Commission has questioned the need for another refinery, casting further doubt over proposals for a refinery at the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ).

The grouping of the local ONA Group’s Nareva subsidiary and International Power (IP) have emerged as low bidder in the second attempt by state utility Office National de l’Electricité to award a contact for the 660MW coal-fired independent power plant at Safi.

Petroceltic International has announced the start of appraisal drilling on the Isarene permit.

Addax and Oryx Group subsidiary Addax Bioenergy SA has broken ground for the construction of an ethanol refinery and biomass-fuelled power plant, due to become operational in 2013, at its sugarcane plantation development near Makeni in central Sierra Leone. Addax Bioenergy in June signed a loan agreement with seven European and African development finance institutions

The European Commission has proposed new disclosure requirements along the lines of the US Dodd-Frank Act for companies based in the European Union

According to SouthWest Energy chairman and chief executive Tewodros Ashenafi, the use of full-tensor gravity (FTG) geophysical surveying technology – initially developed by Bell Labs for the US Navy’s mapping of stealth submarines and more recently applied in Uganda by Tullow Oil – had proved invaluable, even if it initially caused suspicion in the heavily militarised Ogaden region

Petroleum commissioner Ernest Rubondo has told the ad hoc parliamentary committee investigating the oil sector that “close to 80” applications had been received from international oil companies looking to secure blocks in Uganda’s open acreage

UK-based G4 Industries has cancelled plans for a controversial 28,000ha jatropha project at Tana River Delta, citing environmental concerns. “We have become increasingly concerned about the environmental implications of operations in the Tana Delta and we have now decided to withdraw

State utility Office National de l’Electricité (ONE) has invited expressions of interest by 1 February 2012 from engineering, procurement and construction contractors to build a 350MW coal-fired power plant, part of its $13.2bn investment programme for the 2011-16 period