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Reshuffle has brought some new faces onto the energy scene, but old guard remain in key posts

The fallout from Saudi Arabia’s 6 March decision to pull the plug on negotiations with Russia to extend and deepen Opec and non-Opec crude production cuts risks dragging Africa’s leading oil exporters into prolonged recession if oil prices do not recover quickly from their new levels of around $35/barrel.All Opec production quotas, Russian commitments to curb its output and other restraint pledges by non-Opec states, which have been in place since 2016, expire at the end of March.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that the Department for International Development (DfID) would merge with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in September is more than an institutional rearrangement of the international relations machinery in post-Brexit Global Britain. The move has been long promised, and Johnson says it will strengthen the United Kingdom’s ability to project itself abroad as a force for good.

Opposition from local authorities to UK private equity investor Actis’ planned takeover of French operator Veolia Environnement’s electricity, water and sanitation concessions in Morocco may be explained in part by a shift in political and popular opinion away from privately financed projects and concessions back to a greater role for local politicians and the state. Morocco is not alone in this: public/private partnership models that give public bodies, and the politicians who lead them, more control are increasingly in vogue.

The Western Cape government has called for Pretoria to speed up policymaking and reduce bureaucracy in its comments on legislative amendments aimed at enabling power procurement by municipalities. In its response to draft amendments to the Electricity Regulation Act 2006 published by South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), the Western Cape government pushed for the right to procure power without requiring ministerial sign-off. The provincial government is also pushing for planning and regulatory processes to be streamlined and for greater clarity on the procurement process.

Even in a country that has become accustomed to scandal and incompetence at the highest levels of government, the sudden “strategic redeployment” of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene on 9 December caused public outrage and market turbulence. Nene was replaced by unknown backbencher David van Rooyen, a man with no experience of national government. The rand fell to more than R16 to the dollar, South African government bond yields spiked, and equity in South African banks took a hammering, in what one banking source described to African Energy as the biggest domestic economic shock to hit the country since the end of apartheid rule in 1994.

While oil and gas companies feel that the Petroleum Industry Bill’s proposed hydrocarbons tax rates of 50% for deep offshore and 25% for onshore and shallow offshore, on top of a 30% corporate income tax, are still too high, Nigerian petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has defended the long-awaited law, which she described as being “competitive by an international standard”.

South Africa’s controversial Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill is due to be returned to the minerals portfolio committee in early May, amid hopes that long-running uncertainty about the legal framework for exploration and production might finally be resolved. Concerns have focused on plans to transfer authority over the processing and administration of exploration and production rights from the regulatory Petroleum Agency SA to the Department of Mineral Resources’ regional managers, as well as a vague provision giving the state a 20% free carried interest in all new exploration and production rights.

Israeli miner Elenilto has dropped out of Block SL-07A-10 offshore Sierra Leone, leaving it to be licensed to newcomer Minexco Petroleum with 90% and Signet Petroleum with 10%. Elenilto said on 15 August it had been awarded a majority stake and operatorship of the block

Prime minister Béji Caïd Essebsi has promoted a well-known technocrat to control the energy industry in his new interim government. Industry and technology minister Abdelaziz Rassaa

As the deadline for solving the toughest challenges of Sudan’s peace agreement looms, both north and south are facing sharp falls in oil income, writes Thalia Griffiths.

Madagascar Oil’s onshore heavy oil ambitions apart, there is little movement on other upstream projects, not least due to a difficult political environment in which controversial President Andry Rajoelina has sought to control the nascent oil industry while consolidating his power base in Antananarivo.

A survey of 78 Africa-focused energy companies carried out for the AIX Webinar organised by CbI Meetings on 30 April suggests that travel restrictions are causing the most difficulty for the African electricity supply industry. Companies largely reported a moderate to severe impact from Covid-19, with construction companies, utility-scale developers and governments among the worst affected. Over the medium term, developers expect that the impact will be most severe on interest and foreign exchange rate volatility, while officials expressed real concerns that insolvent utilities would be further disadvantaged, potentially setting back years of reform.

Lower oil prices and production cuts put Angola’s astronomic growth forecasts into question, but OPEC’s newest member remains bullish about its business prospects

Business leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief as post-election calm suggested the investment climate would remain stable with the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in control after the 5-6 September general election. Final results, released on 17 September, showed that the