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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.

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.

Progress has been made towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 of providing universal energy access by 2030, with €108bn in funding in 2014-19, but international partners will need to do much more if the target is to be reached, according to a new Africa-EU Energy Partnership report by African Energy’s parent company CbI, writes David Slater

Dogged by allegations of corruption, a cripplingly expensive build programme, falling demand, and competition from off-grid alternatives, South Africa’s beleaguered utility Eskom suffered a further blow late last month as its credit rating was downgraded by ratings agencies Moody’s Investor Services and Standard and Poor’s (S&P), while Fitch put several ratings on negative watch. The moves followed an earlier decision by S&P to downgrade the sovereign rating and by Moody’s to place the sovereign on review for downgrade.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has approved a regulatory clearing account (RCA) balance for Eskom of R13.27bn ($763m).The RCA is a mechanism for recouping prudently incurred costs that were not foreseen in previous tariff determinations, as well as making adjustments where assumptions such as inflation and tariff income have varied. The balance will be recouped from standard tariff customers, special pricing arrangement customers and international customers. Eskom and Nersa have frequently found themselves at odds over the RCA as well as tariff determinations.

National utility Eskom is gauging interest in a $10bn plan to become carbon neutral by 2050. The plan was first devised by the Eskom Sustainability Task Team and hinges on South Africa having one of the highest carbon emissions per capita in the world, providing plenty of scope for emissions reductions.

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded its local and foreign currency long-term issuer ratings and foreign currency senior unsecured debt rating to B3 from B2 as financial and capital outflows exceed the current account surplus, further eroding foreign exchange reserves.

Too often ignored except in times of extreme crisis, Lesotho is looking to emerge from years of political instability and economic malaise under previous coalition governments, as the Basotho population counts on newly-elected tycoon Prime Minister Sam Matekane to usher in transformative change.

More than $20bn worth of merger and acquisition deals have been finalised so far this year, with buyers increasingly looking to target producing assets to capitalise on high energy prices, writes James Gavin.

Zesco chairman Vickson Ncube has said achieving cost- reflective tariffs (CRTs) should not be done at the expense of making electricity too expensive for key groups such as copper miners and ordinary consumers.

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed NewMed Energy’s proposed acquisition of London-listed Capricorn Energy has pushed aside a planned deal with Tullow Oil in favour of a merger that intensifies Israel’s involvement in the Egyptian upstream sector and could represent another important eastern Mediterranean gas play.

The four-nation Organisation for the Development of the Senegal River (OMVS) has issued a tender seeking an operator to raise financing, conduct studies and build a 225kV transmission line, as part of the Manantali II project to supply Mauritania with electricity from hydroelectric power (HEP) plants in Mali.

After Covid damaged the industry – the 5.7GW added to the continent’s grid in 2021 was the lowest since 2012 – a substantial increase in the rate of power generation plant commissioning is inevitable and will be weighted in favour of new technologies, according to African Energy Live Data’s latest analysis of projects delivered and in the pipeline. Many countries are struggling to meet their ambitions to build new capacity, but Live Data also indicates that the average rate of commissioning is very likely to increase towards the 8GW/yr needed to deliver those projects now being built. Also apparent is the renewable energy revolution that has already taken place in the minds and business plans of project developers, sponsors and officials – even if this has yet to be seen in gigawatts on the ground.