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Westinghouse Electric Belgium has succeeded in a Supreme Court of Appeal case against a decision by Eskom on 12 August 2014 to award a contract to France’s Areva to replace six steam generators at the 1,800MW Koeberg nuclear power plant in the Western Cape. The ruling overturned an earlier High Court decision in favour of Eskom. Judge Carole Hélène Lewis ordered the utility to rerun the procurement process. Eskom is seeking to challenge the judgement in the Constitutional Court.

The unprecedented international warrant for the arrest of former energy and mines minister Chakib Khelil and 19 other individuals, including members of his family, brings the Algerian judiciary into line with aggressive corruption investigations in Italy and elsewhere. It also removes the suspicion that those involved might still enjoy some degree of domestic political protection. Warrants issued by prosecutors in Milan in late July had already provided strong indications that Khelil could be directly implicated in a major corruption investigation concerning the Italian engineering company Saipem, state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach and the electricity and gas utility Sonelgaz. But, until the recent announcement, it appeared that these alleged abuses, committed in Algeria, were being more vigorously pursued overseas.

Greenpeace has served papers to energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) and finance minister Nhlanhla Nene through the sheriff of the Pretoria High Court in an attempt to force the government to update its decade-old nuclear liability regulations. A court date will be set, and Greenpeace senior climate and energy campaign manager Melita Steele told African Energy that the organisation hoped a judgement would be reached this year. Greenpeace said in a statement that South Africa’s nuclear liability regulations were “completely inadequate” having not been updated since May 2004.

A wage dispute between national utility Eskom and employee unions has seen load-shedding return over the past month. Eskom is struggling to regain control of its finances and its workforce, which has increased from 32,000 in 2003 to 47,600 in 2017 according to its annual reports, is an obvious place to start. Wages have also increased significantly over the period. Eskom chairman Jabu Mabuza said in late June that starting negotiations by offering no wage increase was a tactical mistake.

A tightening of visa rules is scheduled from 15 May to give intelligence services more time to assess visitors to Egypt. Individual travellers will have to apply for a visa at their local consulate, rather than picking one up on entry. Reuters quoted Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Badr Abdelatty as saying: “The system remains unchanged for tourist groups, which can obtain visas at airports, but individuals have to get a prior visa from embassies.”

Business fixer and lobbyist Pierre Goudiaby Atepa, who introduced Frank Timis to then president Abdoulaye Wade, denied that exploitation of Senegal’s offshore resources could lead to an ‘oil curse’, as opposition critics complain, when he spoke recently to local television station TFM. Goudiaby said he had received no reward for introducing Timis to Wade. He was only “working for the good of my country in my role as presidential adviser”. At the time, newly appointed energy minister Samuel Sarr led the negotiations, supported by Société des Pétroles du Sénégal (Petrosen) director-general Serigne Mboup. Sarr was replaced as minister in 2009, when presidential son Karim Wade inherited the African Petroleum Corporation (APC) dossier.

SNC-Lavalin Group chief executive Robert Card has warned that any move by the authorities to charge the Canadian engineering company in connection with an extensive bribery scandal would immediately threaten its future and could force it to close. Card told The Globe and Mail he would be “deeply concerned” if the company was charged because it would hurt the business severely. “If the company can’t do business, you really only have two choices. You are going to do some dismemberment and cease to exist entirely, or you are going to be owned by somebody else,” he said.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) approved Ethiopia’s application for EITI candidature at a board meeting on 19 March, much to the anger of several parties, including Human Rights Watch (HRW). The country now has three years to achieve compliance with the EITI Standard, which was upgraded last year. “Some opposed this decision, but it should be remembered that becoming a candidate does not mean that any country has met the EITI Standard. In the case of Ethiopia, the decision shows that the Board was convinced by the government’s commitment to the EITI’s principles,” EITI chair Clare Short said in a statement.

The High Court in London on 16 November issued a summary judgement that a $168.8m debt owed by Independent Power Tanzania Ltd (IPTL) to Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd (SCBHK) is payable in full. The case was brought by SCBHK and Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia as facility agent and security agent respectively against IPTL, VIP Engineering and Marketing Ltd, which is one of IPTL’s founding sponsors, and Pan African Power Solutions (PAP), whose chairman is controversial businessman Harbinder Singh Sethi and whose current ownership of IPTL is strongly contested.

Swiss-based trader Trafigura has announced its support for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), as part of a new policy on disclosure of payments to governments. The 18 November announcement makes Trafigura the first commodity trader to join the 90 oil, gas and mining companies already supporting the EITI. In a further step, it has published a policy on payments to governments, drawn up in consultation with the EITI International Secretariat. The policy commits the company to disclosing Trafigura’s payments to governments in EITI compliant and candidate countries beginning in 2015.

Amid rising social tensions and opposition to President Blaise Compaoré’s plans to stand for another term as president, public accounts court senior judge Noumoutié Herbert Traoré has promised that judgements on three long-running cases will soon be issued. The three cases include allegations of false accounting by state energy company Société Nationale Burkinabé d’Hydrocarbures (Sonabhy). The case against Sonabhy includes false accounting to gain tax breaks and contracts awarded by direct negotiation without prior board approval. Traoré formally delivered the 2012 report on management of public finances from the Cour des Comptes to Compaoré in December 2013.

Petrochemical giant Sasol, whose shares are listed on the Johannesburg and New York stock exchanges, has dropped its black economic empowerment (BEE) coal-handling partner Khotso Batho Mining Services after a long-running scandal covered in South Africa’s The Times/Sunday Times newspaper. On 4 August, the paper reported that Sasol had “pulled the plug on a shady empowerment deal with union boss Simon Mofokeng and wife Maureen after Business Times exposed how they used fake documents to clinch contracts worth over R300m [£19.8m]”.

UN-sponsored Radio Okapi reported on 5 February that the International Court of Arbitration of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce had declared that the government’s cancellation of an exploration agreement with the local Générale Pétrolière du Congo (Gepeco) was “faulty, ineffective and unfounded”. Gepeco signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 12 October 2011 for oil exploration in the Tanganyika Graben. The government cancelled the MoU without warning in April 2012, and Gepeco took the case to the court in November 2013.

The drive to discover and exploit resources in high-risk jurisdictions such as those in most African countries has obliged international oil and oil services companies to adopt ever more sophisticated compliance systems. The cost to a company of responding to a US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into an alleged breach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has recently been estimated at £275,000 per day over two to three years. Yet in spite of the harsh penalties for companies that get it wrong, the appetite for such risks remains undiminished. Meanwhile, the DOJ is responding to the increasingly globalised nature of its role by building relationships with its counterparts around the world.

The Supreme Court of Justice has ruled in favour of Kivu Lake Energy Corporation (KLEC) in its case against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the prime minister and the Ministry of Hydrocarbons. On 27 July, it ordered the suspension of the ministry’s provisional award of a concession for exploitation of Lake Kivu’s methane resources to a consortium of Tunisia’s Engineering Procurement & Project Management (EPPM), Swede Energy DRC and Kenya’s TransCentury. A final decision on KLEC’s application for the definitive annulment of the award is still pending.