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The US government has imposed licensing restrictions on South Sudan’s Ministry of Petroleum, Ministry of Mining, state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet) and 12 other oil-related organisations. The restrictions were issued on 21 March by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) at the US Department of Commerce “as part of the US effort to end the ongoing conflict and resolve the humanitarian crisis in South Sudan”, a statement said.

The Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (FEACC) is drafting a new regulation that will enable it to investigate corruption claims involving the private sector, according to a late May report on Ethiopian news site capitalethiopia.com. Ethiopia’s decade-old corruption law does not allow FEACC to look into private sector corruption claims, limiting it to corruption in state-owned organisations. FEACC recently arrested several Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority officials and local businessmen.

National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla has intensified his conflict with Presidency Council head Fayez Al-Sarraj, alleging that German oil company Wintershall has formed an alliance with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and succeeded in influencing the drafting of legislation for its commercial benefit. In a statement published on NOC’s website on 10 May, Sanalla said that, following the breakdown of negotiations over the renewal of its concessions, Wintershall had “shut in over 160,000 b/d of production, at a cost to the Libyan state of almost a quarter of a billion dollars per month”.

Moves to make the operations of national oil company Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (SNPC) and Republic of Congo’s management of revenues more transparent have slowed down in the past two years, according to sources in Brazzaville and abroad canvassed by African Energy.

With Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency marked by a lack of improvement to power supply, a push from the top is needed to clear blockages that have held up progress. Generation on 31 March stood at only 3,540MW, according to the Federal Ministry of Power. With peak demand recorded at 12,800MW, the sector suffered a shortfall of some 9,260MW.The declaration of the Transitional Electricity Market (TEM) in February was seen as key to unblocking the sector. However, industry sources doubt whether the TEM is being fully implemented.

An initiative to bring local authorities, business and consumers together to develop the distributed supply of electricity to Cameroon’s many isolated communities was launched in Yaoundé on 10-13 March. The Invest’Elec initiative is supported by regulator Agence de Régulation du Secteur de l’Electricité (Arsel) and the European Union. They are seeking to establish a public-private partnership (PPP) model based on projects that use off-grid solutions to build integrated generation-distribution systems. The focus is on distributed mini-hydroelectric and biomass projects, seen as most appropriate to Cameroon’s resources base, and a few solar projects in the Far North region.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) decision to drop its 17-month long investigation into Soma Oil and Gas has comprehensively cleared the company of the corruption allegations levelled against it by the United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) and leaves hanging the question of why these allegations were made in the first place. The company is now free to finalise negotiations over production sharing agreements for a number of offshore blocks as soon as a new federal government is in place in Mogadishu. Its management then hopes to raise finance by farming out part of its interest and to start drilling as quickly as possible.

Lekela Power’s takeover of the Taiba Ndiaye wind project and construction starts at two privately financed solar photovoltaic (PV) units point to a strong renewable energy element in Senegal’s ambitious plans to qualify as an emerging economy by 2035. Extra thermal capacity will also be added, while gas imports and/or offshore upstream development will be promoted as the government presses to get as many new generation projects going as possible. Several schemes are slated to start up in Q4 2017, coinciding with President Macky Sall’s quest for re-election, senior officials noted.

Norway’s Spectrum ASA has announced an agreement to acquire 28,000km of long offset 2D seismic data offshore southern Somalia. Spectrum’s survey will cover areas licensed to Pecten, a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil, which have been under force majeure since 1992. It will also manage and market 20,000km of 2D data gathered and processed by Soma Oil & Gas in 2014, which it says the survey is designed to complement. Soma – a UK company chaired by former Conservative party leader Lord (Michael) Howard – is giving the results of its survey to the federal government in return for the right to pre-emptively choose 12 blocks.

The governments of Tanzania and Uganda, the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) and Total E&P Uganda signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 12 October creating a working framework for the potential development of a crude export pipeline from Hoima to Tanga port.

The US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has halted preparations for a second compact, planned to make $472.8m available for the power sector, citing concerns about elections in Zanzibar and about the country’s Cybercrimes Act.The government declared the October elections in the semi-autonomous archipelago invalid, saying there had been irregularities in the voting process.

The Liberian Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) in late May said that several government officials had refused to co-operate with its recent phase of the Assets Declaration Verification Exercise. LACC chairwoman Frances Johnson-Allison told a 21 May news conference on the release of its report into the first phase of the exercise that 18 government officials had failed to co-operate, despite receiving “multiple notices” from the commission.

With a month to go before elections, state power utility Zesco has reduced daily power cuts to households from eight or more hours to four hours, in a move expected to boost President Edgar Lungu’s chances of another five-year term. However, the reduced load-shedding does not apply to mining companies, which are still restricted to less than 30% of their peak power demand. Zesco spokesman Henry Kapata said the utility was importing 90MW from a power barge docked at Mozambique’s Nacala port, 48MW from Aggreko and 75MW from Electricidade de Mocambique.

Allegedly corrupt dealings with the former Libyan regime are continuing to cost implicated companies dear more than four years after the start of the February 2011 revolution. On 19 February, Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group announced in a statement to investors that corruption and fraud charges levelled by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada were “without merit”. It said it would “vigorously defend itself and plead not guilty”. President and chief executive Robert Card said that “the charges stem from the same alleged activities of former employees from over three years ago in Libya, which are publicly known, and that the company has co-operated on with authorities since then”.

Angola’s new president João Lourenço has sacked José Filomeno dos Santos as head of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund and set up a committee to manage the body. The sacking of José Filomeno, known as Zenú, the son of former president José Eduardo dos Santos, follows Lourenço’s removal on 15 November of Isabel dos Santos as head of the all-powerful national oil company Sonangol. Isabel’s sacking startled commentators who had thought Lourenço would keep everything much as president dos Santos had left it.