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Houston-listed Vaalco Energy has secured government approval for the Venus Block P development plan in Equatorial Guinea, where the company now has an 80% participation interest in the project and is the operator.

South Sudan has warned it could quit the Opec+ grouping if it is not allowed to hike crude production to 230,000 b/d by 2024, an increase of around 70,000 b/d on current output.

TotalEnergies is to face a group of environmental pressure groups in a French court on 7 December, in a dispute over the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) and Tilenga projects in Uganda and Tanzania.

Mozambique’s cabinet on 6 December approved changes to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with Anadarko and Eni to allow the two companies to sell the government’s share of gas from projects in the Rovuma Basin. The concessionaires have agreed to combine their LNG volumes into joint sales in order to offer bigger volumes that can command better prices at the market. Eni is expected to make a final investment decision on its Coral South floating LNG project by the end of this year, while Anadarko’s investment decision on the Golfinho-Atum development is expected in 2017.

In a key step towards a final investment decision for Mozambique’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) scheme, the council of ministers in Maputo has approved the plan of development for Eni’s Coral discovery in offshore Area 4. The approval relates to the first phase, which will develop 5tcf of gas in the discovery, via a 3.4m t/yr floating LNG facility. Eni said the plan of development, the first to be approved in the Rovuma Basin, foresees the drilling and completion of six subsea wells in water depths of 2,000 metres some 80km offshore.

With sky-high prices apparently a thing of the past, the outlook is gloomy for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters, even in the most lucrative markets, such as Japan. With a predicted supply glut running into the next decade and price pressures accentuated by the fast-emerging spot market (for more on this see African Energy’s sister publication Gulf States News http://www.gsn-online.com/amid-shifting-global-gas-supply-gulf-states-emerge-as-their-own-best-market) only a few major projects are still expected to go ahead worldwide. In Africa, these include Eni’s Zohr field in Egypt and developments in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin (as well as its smaller, more southerly fields supplying South Africa).

Mozambique’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports are expected to be dispatched “on or around” 14 October, shipping industry publication Trade Winds said on 21 September citing sources working with Eni’s Coral Sul 3.4m t/yr floating liquid natural gas (FLNG) plant. The Rome-headquartered supermajor is said to be moving towards ordering a second FLNG vessel.

Scores of people have been killed in a Boko Haram attack on a military-escorted oil exploration team in the Magumeri area of Borno State. The Vanguard newspaper said 19 soldiers, 33 civilian militia and 17 civilians were known to have been killed in the attack on 25 July, while minister of state for petroleum resources and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) board chairman Ibe Kachikwu said the military was still collecting information and could not confirm the death toll.

Supporters of a revamped Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) believe that, this time, the outcome for legislation to reform Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the hydrocarbons sector will be different from past disappointments, when vested interests stalled efforts to overhaul an underperforming and opaque sector. Senate president Ahmad Lawan on 29 September committed the bicameral National Assembly to pass legislation to make the industry more effective and efficient. After years of delay,“we will break that jinx and see to the passage of the bill”, Lawan promised. The Senate on 30 September approved the a 239-page draft PIB’s first reading, opening the way for more hearings.

Lekoil has been reduced to a penny share in London, but the potential of its OPL 310 asset – once held by Afren – makes it a significant indigenous player in the Nigerian oil sector. Petroleum resources minister Timipre Sylva is more than just an interested bystander in Lekoil founder Lekan Akinyanmi’s battle with activist investors who are deeply critical of his governance, writes Jon Marks.

“We are transforming our petroleum industry”, President Muhammadu Buhari told a 19 July event in Abuja to launch Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC Ltd) – the limited liability commercial company which is replacing the wholly state-run NNPC corporation. An ebullient Buhari spoke about the emergence of “a commercial oil company with over 200m shareholders with integrity and excellence”.

Eni, ExxonMobil, Total and Statoil have all applied for blocks offshore Cyprus after Eni’s Zohr discovery opened a new play in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism said that it had received an application from Eni and Total with Eni as operator for Block 6. For Block 8, the ministry received applications from Eni, and from a consortium of Cairn Energy’s Capricorn Oil with Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration.

Natural gas production in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) could double over the course of this decade, from 1.3m boe/d in 2021 to 2.7m boe/d in 2030, according to estimates by consultancy Rystad Energy.

Many critical questions remain to be answered, as supermajors keep their counsel on developing a major new offshore oil and gas play, but things seem to be moving ahead quickly with Chevron said to be re-entering the Orange Basin after two decades, the government saying it has agreed with Shell and TotalEnergies that production from their Graff and Venus discoveries should start ‘as soon as possible’, and BW Energy making promising noises about the Kudu gas-to-power play. Local players are set for a big payday as the Namibian upstream becomes a supermajor focus, writes Marc Howard.

The Niger Delta’s Ogoniland crisis may seem to have peaked when Sani Abacha’s military regime hanged writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists in November 1995, but issues from that period have never gone away. A fresh action brought in the UK Supreme Court by lawyers Leigh Day on behalf of 40,000 Ogale and Bille people has the potential to cause major harm to Royal Dutch Shell, which has always argued it cannot be held liable for actions by its joint venture with the government, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), in which Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation held 55% but Shell was operator.