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Brazil’s Vale SA will start building a thermal power station next year at its $1,322m Moatize coal project, the state-owned Noticias newspaper reported on 2 June. The plant will have an eventual capacity of 1,800MW, with its first unit producing one-third of that.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation is to provide $70m in loans as part of a $190m long-term financing package to the Umeme electricity distribution utility. Stanbic and Standard Chartered Bank also participated in the financing, which aims to help the company meet increasing demand for power, while controlling costs and improving operational efficiency. “This financing is a milestone for the energy sector, which has never had anything like this level of investment in the distribution network,” said Umeme chairman Patrick Bitature.

Kosmos Energy plans a new drilling campaign next year exploring basin floor fans in deeper water outboard from its previous exploration in the hope of finding oil. “We are currently acquiring seismic data in southern Mauritania and northern Mauritania, and this seismic data has imaged giant to supergiant leads and prospects in a basin floor setting. We plan on drilling out a three-well programme at a minimum, starting in 2017, that will test a gross unrisked mean resource of 29bn boe,” Kosmos vice-president exploration Tracey Henderson told Global Pacific & Partners’ Africa Upstream conference on 1 November.

The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga) has issued an investment guarantee supporting ContourGlobal’s KivuWatt project to generate power from Lake Kivu’s methane. The $142m project involves an integrated methane gas extraction and production facility and associated 25MW power plant at Kibuye, on the shore of Lake Kivu.

In a recent white paper, UK-based Aggreko became the latest traditional supplier of thermal power solutions to advocate the use of solar-battery-diesel hybrid systems at mines. The company, which launched its hybrid offering 18 months ago and installed its first system last year at the Bisha gold mine in Eritrea, joined another major mine supplier, Wärtsilä, in promoting the technology for mines. But mining is not the only area where Aggreko is having to look at new products and business models.

EDF International and its partners have set up the Nachtigal Hydro Power Company (NHPC) to develop the 420MW Nachtigal dam scheme on the Sanaga River.NHPC, a Cameroonian limited company based in Yaoundé, was established on 7 July. It is 40% owned by EDF, 30% by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and 30% by the Cameroonian state. Establishment of the project company follows the signing of a joint development agreement in November 2013, and a production concession contract in July 2014.

Italy’s Eni has expanded its central African footprint by moving into the Democratic Republic of Congo with a farm-in agreement with Surestream Petroleum to acquire 55% and operatorship in the Ndunda Block.

Solar power developers in Nigeria were caught off guard when, after months of uncertainty, Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) offered 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with a base tariff of $0.115/kWh to each of the 15 solar photovoltaic (PV) projects that had already received a generation licence from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (Nerc). Local media reported that 12 projects initialled PPAs with combined capacity of 975MW.

The Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) has announced that prequalification will take place in December for the 350MW Abdelmoumen pumped storage facility, part of the Station de Transfert d’Energie par Pompage (Step) project. Expressions of interest have been invited for Abdelmoumen twice before, in 2008 and 2013. The project will be located around 70km north-east of Agadir in Taroudant Province, and will generate power as well as reinforcing the existing 460MW Afourer facility, which began operating ten years ago.

AIM-listed services company Atlas Development and Support Services is to place its Kenyan subsidiaries into liquidation. The company, which has serial entrepreneur Andrew Groves as a non-executive director, will focus on its new industrial division and joint venture with Orchid Business Group in Ethiopia. The company, which changed its name from Africa Oilfield Logistics a year ago, blamed the move on “the downturn in the oil and gas industry, market adjustments and the failure of certain key clients to settle debts, together with increasing creditor pressure”.

APR Energy has announced new contracts to provide 40MW of power to Mozambique and 32MW to Senegal. The Mozambique award is a multi-year contract for a fast-track power plant comprising gas power modules. The plant will run solely on natural gas and will be APR Energy’s second project in the country. APR’s 32MW contract for diesel power modules in Senegal will supplement the 66MW of power the company is already providing. The new capacity will be installed at APR’s Kounoune site just outside Dakar.

The Ethiopian government and World Bank Group (WBG) are holding high-level talks about the first round of the Scaling Solar programme, in which Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power was awarded two 125MW projects – Gad and Dicheto – on 11 September after bidding $0.02526/kWh. However, questions are being asked about the disqualification of the four remaining bidders. The involvement of the International Finance Corporation in the bids appears to have raised unexpected issues, while the process also encountered challenges around foreign exchange and Ethiopia’s difficult macroeconomic environment.

Sound Energy has announced a field management agreement with Schlumberger for the onshore Tendrara licence. Under the agreement, Schlumberger will provide integrated technical services, equipment and personnel to Sound, and will pay part of the cost of the first three Tendrara appraisal wells, and the cost of developing the licence area after that. In exchange, Schlumberger will be granted an upside linked to production performance.

Tullow Oil has added to its Walvis Basin acreage, taking up to 40% in Block 2012A from Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas. The block lies immediately to the north of Block 2012B, where Tullow farmed in in September 2013 and acquired 1,000km of 2D and 3,000km2 of 3D seismic earlier this year. Initial data mapping has identified four main prospects, inclusing Albatross, a Cretaceous turbidite fan structure, the same play that proved succesful offshore Ghana. Tullow also operates the Kudu gas field offshore southern Namibia, where a gas-to-power development is planned.

Hyperdynamics and AGR Well Management have reached a settlement in their dispute over cost overruns for the Sabu well offshore Guinea, three weeks before the case was due to open in London. AGR provided project management services for Hyperdynamics’ subsidiary SCS Corporation for the well in 2011-12. Under the settlement, SCS will receive $17.7m from an escrow account previously established by the companies. The net proceeds to SCS will be $15.6m after reconciliation of a joint interest account with block partner Dana Petroleum.