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The question of how and whether financial institutions should support major energy projects that have fossil fuel components is prompting regulators and insurers to weigh up potential new rules, including re-examining the definition of terms like “ESG” (environmental, social and governance). 

Fuel smuggling is allegedly being carried out in the port of Benghazi in broad daylight, even as petrol stations in the city and elsewhere across the country run dry, showing how Libya’s hugely expensive fuel subsidy regime is malfunctioning. A recent auditor’s report has set out the costs of the wasteful system and pointed to billions of dollars of oil revenue that remain unaccounted for. John Hamilton investigates.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s re-election as African National Congress leader, and with it the right to lead the governing ANC in the 2024 presidential elections, has deep implications for the South African energy industry and wider economy – some of them very negative, as Eskom struggles with a legacy of corruption in a public sector prone to mismanagement, write Tonderayi Mukeredzi with Jon Marks.

Glencore received the ‘highest ever fines and costs ordered in a British corporate criminal conviction’, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office said after a London court found the resources giant guilty of graft – in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria – and of ‘failures to prevent bribery’ in Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan in 2011-14. Chastened once more after its practises were reported in eye-watering legal detail, Glencore has embarked on “an extensive programme of corporate reform”.

The ground-breaking power purchase agreement signed by independent power producer Azura Power in 2013 is again being targeted by a National Assembly probe. Azura has been widely seen as a model for private investment in the electricity supply industry, but pressure continues as politicians seek a way out of a deal they see as too costly, writes Adaora Elemide in Abuja.

The government’s dissolution of Power Market Ltd (PML) signals further disarray in Malawi’s power sector. Some insiders and developers who spoke to African Energy didn’t lament the single-buyer’s demise, but serious macroeconomic difficulties pose severe challenges for an industry as the power crisis continues, writes Marc Howard.

Former Gabon Oil Company (GOC) director-general Christian Patrichi Tanasa Mbadinga, appeared before the Cour Criminelle Spéciale (CCS) in Libreville on 21 March, charged with misappropriating FCFA85bn ($143m) from the state oil company.

The Ministry of Military Production (MMP) has further extended its oil and gas sector interests with a new deal that shows how the military’s business arms intend to cooperate with international investors. A cooperation protocol was agreed in late October between Italian-Egyptian wellhead production company Tharwa Breda Petroleum Service Company (TBPSCo) and the National Authority for Military Production (NAMP). TBPSCo is 50% owned by Italy’s Breda Energia, with the other half of its equity held by a group of Egyptian state-owned institutions.

A 4 September ruling by the Commercial Court in London granted the Nigerian government leave to appeal an arbitration award to British Virgin Islands-listed Process & Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) now worth around $10bn. The award relates to P&ID’s claim that the government’s failure to meet its obligations caused its gas-processing project to fail. High Court judge Ross Cranston’s decision is an important milestone in the case, allowing the government to proceed to a full trial examining allegations of corruption in the contract award and during the arbitration hearing.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa fired energy and power development minister Fortune Chasi on 14 August after only 15 months in office, accusing him of “conducting government business in a manner incompatible with presidential expectations”.

National Oil Corporation has relaunched its growth-oriented upstream strategy and is encouraging international companies to help Libya achieve the 2m b/d crude oil production target mooted for at least 15 years. Eni’s recent huge gas development agreement with NOC suggests the market’s need for Libyan hydrocarbons has trumped more pessimistic assessments of the government’s capabilities, but widespread political, social and legal opposition to the Italian deal is a reminder that, while huge growth in oil and gas production is technically feasible, developments remain prey to Libya’s volatile politics.

A Lagos court ruling against the leadership of ambitious independent oil and gas company Seplat could reinforce concerns that, even with an apparently pro-business president-elect, Nigeria may not prove an easy market for international oil companies.

Savannah Energy has vowed to pursue all its legal options – including arbitration at the ICA in Paris – after Mahamat Idriss Déby’s ‘transitional’ government nationalised the upstream oil assets the UK independent had acquired from ExxonMobil in December.

The Ghanaian government is making another effort to renegotiate state electricity distributor Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)’s supply deals with independent power producers (IPPs), in a bid to replace take-or-pay agreements that have left the state liable for unused electricity while amassing large debts.

Recourse to arbitration by Tullow Oil – Ghana’s largest crude producer, along with Dallas-based Kosmos Energy, through their equity stakes in the Jubilee and Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (Ten) fields – underlines a number of difficult issues facing the London (LSE)- and Ghana Stock Exchange-listed company.