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The local Sociedade Petrolífera Angolana (Somoil)’s deal to pay $830m for Lisbon-based Galp’s entire Angolan upstream assets marks another legacy hydrocarbons position being relinquished to a willing local buyer by a western energy company that says it is looking to “high-grade” its upstream portfolio.

While the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has reported progress with plans to sell at least some of the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) gas-fired plants, opposition to the privatisation from state governments and other lobbies continues. Nigerian government sources have told African Energy the sales process has stalled with no immediate sign of a breakthrough.

Electricity generation and transmission infrastructure is increasingly being targeted by groups including Boko Haram in the north-east. According to Transmission Company of Nigeria, pylons on the 330kV Damaturu-Maidugiri line were destroyed by insurgents in January and March. As a result, grid power to Borno state capital Maiduguri was cut off for three months.

Announcements of big funding commitments and project completions in the last three months point to the commercial and industrial market continuing to grow at a rapid pace, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa’s larger economies.

senior officials have kept their counsel during a difficult period when coronavirus and the oil price slump have laid low the Nigerian economy, but there are signs that reformists in Abuja are trying to use the crisis to their advantage – reflected in action to end fuel subsidies and accelerate power sector reforms. But despite some potentially important steps forward, the outlook is extremely difficult in a humanitarian crisis where social distancing is all but impossible for the majority of the population.

Nigerian ambitions for the downstream sector remains in limbo, with uncertainty afflicting key projects aimed at ending the ruinously expensive habit of the continent’s major crude producer being a net importer of oil products, writes James Gavin.

After years of futile exploration, President Muhammadu Buhari has announced the discovery of oil in Bauchi and Gombe states in north-eastern Nigeria, just as his administration enters its final period in office. However, there is considerable scepticism about an announcement that could allow fragile northern states to tap into additional federal funding, writes Adaora Elemide in Abuja.

The problems of Nigeria’s southeast are rarely far from being a political and oil company preoccupation. Issues of governance and reputational damage weigh heavy on majors’ perceptions about operating in a lucrative but troubled region as lawyers busy themselves acting for local communities against Royal Dutch Shell and potentially other IOCs in a series of class actions. The new military top team appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari is challenged with reducing insecurity, including from rising levels of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

Tullow Oil’s Ghana unit has filed for arbitration in the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) over two tax bills amounting to $387m received from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the London AIM-listed independent said on 14 February. This is in addition to a separate existing tax dispute between Tullow and the authorities in Accra.

Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has criticised the impetus from rich countries to divest from fossil fuels in a strongly-worded article for New York-based Foreign Affairs magazine, In The divestment delusion: Why banning fossil fuel investments would crush Africa, published on 31 August.

Ever since Chinua Achebe borrowed from WB Yates’ lines, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” for his ground-breaking novel of late colonial Nigeria, the phrase ‘things fall apart’ has been used to describe episodes in Nigerian politics. It is again relevant to ask whether the embattled Nigerian state can hold when confronted by a dizzying range of crises, writes Marc Howard.

The commissioning of the final projects at the Benban solar park in Upper Egypt at the end of October means that nearly 1.5GW of solar PV generation capacity is now being supplied to the grid from the largest solar complex in Africa. In fact the additional capacity brought online by Benban will be marginal at best in an already oversupplied power system where installed capacity – on paper at least – is just shy of 60GW, close to double the 2018 peak load of just under 31MW. The scheme is actually contributing more in other ways.

The signing of Dabaa nuclear plant notice to proceed contracts is a landmark for the global industry as well as for the development of nuclear power on the African continent. It is the largest nuclear power transaction ever concluded and its financial scale dwarfs the commitments made until now for new generation capacity in Egypt. The addition of 4.8GW of new baseload power in the 2026-2029 period will define the shape of the Egyptian power market well beyond the next decade.

While Egypt has laboured successfully over several years to re-establish export capabilities, the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has destroyed the international LNG market for the time being. With the budget under severe strain, the authorities can ill afford to continue paying premium prices to IOCs for offshore gas and are pushing these partners to rein in production as much as they can. The incomplete deregulation of the domestic market is likely to remain frozen while the government leans on international multilateral support to ride out the crisis.

Hull-based HiiROC expects to install a number of thermal plasma electrolysis units at gas flaring sites in Egypt in 2023, after signing aN MOU with Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company. The programme is part of a wider series of pilot projects that HiiROC hopes will demonstrate the commercial viability of producing what it calls ‘emerald hydrogen’, writes John Hamilton.