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While the focus has been on China, and to a lesser extent other emerging markets investors, less attention has been paid to Gulf-based investors’ drive to acquire African assets. But this is one of the most important recent trends affecting the continent’s resources industries, and especially upstream hydrocarbons. Eleanor Gillespie has been researching these companies to establish who the big players are.

BOWLEVEN: Gabon farmout to Addax; STERLING ENERGY: New banking facilities; WOODSIDE: Mauritania sale completed

Sonangol has prequalified 43 companies as operators and 38 companies as non-operators for the 2007-08 licensing round. These include some well-established Angolan players as well as some new names.

ALGERIA: Sonatrach finds, CAMEROON: New onshore licence for Bowleven, COTE D’IVOIRE: Tullow, Kufpec join Edison block, GHANA: Songa Saturn for Kosmos, MAURITANIA: Sonatrach farms into Total acreage

As Angola plans to raise output to 2m b/d, Total is looking further ahead, launching the Pazflor oil development on the prolific Block 17, writes Thalia Griffiths. Block 17 operator Total has awarded the main contracts for the Pazflor oil development, due on stream in 2011.

Kenya saw a rush to award new exploration licences before the elections because a change of government tends to slow the decision-making process. New arrivals included Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum, also present in neighbouring Sudan, and Canada’s Vangold Resources (AE 125/1).

As they hurtle round the earth 16 times a day at a height of 220 miles, the astronauts of the International Space Station are, among other tasks, photographing vast, previously unknown, and very large scale geological formations capable of assisting oil geologists in their understanding of continental sedimentary basins.

Lundin Oil chairman Adolf Lundin has said he would welcome a formal inquiry by the Swedish government into his company’s operations in Sudan following a critical new report by Christian Aid reviving the controversy over the role of foreign oil companies in funding the government’s war against southern rebels.

There is a new enthusiasm about Libyan business, and European oil companies are stepping up their operations even before the introduction of a new hydrocarbons law, now being drafted, but Muammar Qadhafi’s Libya is still no market for the faint-hearted, writes THALIA GRIFFITHS.