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Oil sector financiers are anticipating another busy year, led by the need for new money in the hydrocarbons sectors in East and West Africa, writes Kevin Godier

More heads could roll following the crisis at Sonatrach as rival factions battle it out. Following the arrests that have savaged state hydrocarbons company Sonatrach’s senior management team, energy and mines minister Chakib Khelil stands at the centre of the ‘perfect storm’ that has engulfed Algerian politics (AE 179/1).

The discreet but intense battle between Tullow and Eni over the sale of Heritage Oil’s Uganda acreage, and investigations and mud-slinging around Ghana’s Jubilee field show how politics can severely complicate the oil industry’s approach to new frontiers, write Thalia Griffiths, Our Accra Correspondent and Jon Marks

The government is determined to hold a licensing round by year-end for onshore and offshore fields – as forecast by African Energy (AE 179/19) – in a very difficult political environment.

Cameroon hopes to license blocks in the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula following settlement of the long-running border dispute with Nigeria.

Speculation is growing that the political order has changed in important ways in recent weeks, during which ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has remained in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment amid growing concern that a dangerous power vacuum is growing. Most analysts still believe Yar’Adua will hold on to his job for as long as he lives

Critics argue that for all the talk of reform in the past two decades, elements of the Algerian state remain rotten at their core. Other observers say the situation has improved markedly during the Bouteflika years, and “technical irregularities” of the sort that have overwhelmed Sonatrach’s senior cadres will be quickly overcome. According to Algerian and international business sources contacted by African Energy,

Investigations into the business dealings of chairman Mohammed Meziane, three influential vice presidents and other senior executives point to corruption at the highest levels of Sonatrach.

Nearly a year after the unity government came to power, Zimbabwe’s economic fundamentals are little improved and financiers are holding back from supporting essential projects, writes Kevin Godier

The Christmas day attack on a flight bound for Detroit in the United States by well-heeled Nigerian student turned radical jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an acute embarrassment to the Nigerian government. It not only forced the US Transportation Security Administration to add the Nation to its watch list of 14 countries

African Energy’s Atlas 2010 charts patterns of activity in key sectors of the continent’s energy industry in maps and analysis that give an overview of recent developments and look ahead to trends in 2010 and beyond. The project has been led by cartographer David Burles, news editor Thalia Griffiths and publishing director Nick Carn

Personalised politics cloud deals and jeopardise development. In many African countries, highly personalised politics, weak leadership, lack of institutional capacity and outright graft all work to undermine progress towards building efficient, modern energy industries. Despite real progress made by governments, companies and other stakeholders in the past decade, many industries and deals lack transparency and political risks

Mogadishu-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG) prime minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke has said that all contracts, including energy contracts, signed by the semi-autonomous Republic of Puntland,

In a promising move for peace in the Niger Delta, rebel groups have reinstated a ceasefire signed in July to pursue further talks with the government. The key to ending the conflict and reaching a compromise is that the government addresses Niger Delta inhabitants’ most pressing grievance – a more proportionate distribution of oil and gas revenues from the region, which account for approximately 80% of government revenue.

Relations between Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo have deteriorated following the tit-for-tat expulsion of Angolan and Congolese nationals who have, until recent crackdowns, generally been allowed to live in border regions. President José Eduardo dos Santos failed to attend the Southern African Development Community’s Kinshasa summit