The European Investment Bank has launched its first international bond issue denominated in Zambian kwacha.

Operator BG has made another new gas discovery with the Mkizi-1 well, drilled by the Deepsea Metro I drillship in 1,301 metres of water between the Mzia and Jodari discoveries in Block 1. The well encountered 33 metres of gas pay in three reservoir intervals within a Tertiary-aged stacked channel complex.

Growing power demand and a steady pace of gas discoveries offshore Tanzania and northern Mozambique have encouraged planners to consider an LNG plant for Mombasa. The Indian Ocean port is set to become a major energy hub, writes Kimemia Mugo in Nairobi. Consultants Mott MacDonald are carrying out a second phase of studies for a potential liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification plant and import facility at Mombasa. The project, funded by the World Bank and other international lenders, is set to be the first of its kind in East Africa

Griffiths Energy International has been hit with a record fine for paying bribes as part of its efforts to secure exploration acreage in Chad, after the company’s new management uncovered evidence of wrongdoing and reported it to Canadian police.

Savannah Petroleum has kicked off its exploration drilling programme with an oil discovery on the Bushiya prospect. Savannah’s acreage consists of areas relinquished by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in the Agadem Rift Basin, offering low-risk exploration on existing plays. The Bushiya-1 well on the R3 portion of the R3/R4 contract area was drilled by the GW 215 rig to a total measured depth of 2,200 metres and encountered an estimated ten metres of net oil-bearing reservoir sandstones across two intervals (three metres and seven metres) in the primary Eocene Sokor Alternances objective.

Swala Oil and Gas (Tanzania) has launched an offering of up to 9.6m ordinary shares at TSh500 on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, the first such offering in the oil and gas industry in East Africa. The offer is open from 9 June to 4 July and there is no maximum subscription limit, but a minimum subscription of 100 shares per person is required. The company said it expected to raise between TSh1.6bn and TSh4.8bn. “Together with our current cash, we believe that this will be sufficient to complete our 2014 seismic work programme and to continue our business development programme,” it said.

Frontier areas like East Africa and the smaller players exploring them are likely to see activity slow sharply this year as the funding crisis bites.

Investors and developers have condemned the government’s refusal to compromise over the terms of the power purchase agreement for utility-scale feed-in tariff (FiT) projects, which means that the majority of projects in the first phase will not go ahead. Cairo’s inflexibility has created a suspicion within the industry that it has used the disputed clauses as a pretext for shutting down most of the programme, having concluded that the FIT prices had been set too high.

Anadarko Petroleum and its partners in Mozambique LNG Area 1 have taken a major step towards a final investment decision (FID) with the signing of sales and purchase agreements (SPAs) with CNOOC, Tokyo Gas/Centrica and Shell.The three long-term SPAs total 6.1m t/yr, bringing the project’s total volume contracted in long-term sales to 7.58m t/yr, just short of the 8.5m t/yr Anadarko says it needs to secure financing for the 12.88m t/yr development. Anadarko has said that further deals are under negotiation as it approaches its stated goal of reaching FID during H1 this year.

Gabon Oil Company (GOC) has signed an agreement with Russia’s Zarubezhneft for the development of the Mboumba field. Deputy director-general Jean Koumbi Guiyedi said GOC’s financial problems meant it lacked the resources to operate the field on its own. “Our country also needs to monetise its gas and our partnership also goes in this direction. And we will see how to extend this partnership to other fields that also have gas,” Guiyedi said.

The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding with California-based Joule Africa to develop the second stage of the Bumbuna hydro project. The 50MW first phase was severely delayed by the civil war but was finally commissioned in November 2009 (AE 175/1).

Sonangol chief executive Isabel dos Santos left a large audience in London in no doubt she was a highly qualified entrepreneur, whose appointment to head the Angolan national oil company (NOC) was made on merit. The task of restructuring Sonangol was a process that could take five years, she said during a rare public interview at the Reuters headquarters in Canary Wharf on 18 October; she was focused on this major challenge above all else, skirting around other elements of the business empire that has made her probably Africa’s richest woman.

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).

Former Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) exploration, production and technical services director Halfani Halfani has been appointed as Ophir Energy Tanzania country chairman. Halfani has retired from TPDC, which has undergone a significant restructuring with the appointment of new director-general James Mataragio and the recruitment of large numbers of new staff in preparation for its new role as national oil company. Mataragio had previously spent ten years with Bell Geospace in Houston.

Total and Kosmos Energy have both signed a Joint Declaration of Principles with the Moroccan government setting out commitments regarding exploration and any eventual development in the disputed Western Sahara. Kosmos said the declaration signed on 19 December 2013 outlined commitments on exploration activities and the key principles under which development would proceed if commercially viable hydrocarbon deposits were discovered. It stated that any such development would be undertaken in accordance with international standards, including those in the United Nations Charter and in the 2002 UN legal opinion on resource development in the territory.