Search results

The Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and Noble Energy and Marathon Oil’s Atlantic Methanol Production Company have given US company Nexant a contract to carry out a feasibility study for the construction of a formaldehyde production plant in Punta Europa. The ministry, which has been touting plans to develop a regional gas supply hub, also said on 13 May it had given UK consultancy Gas Strategies a contract for the development of a gas master plan. Equatorial Guinea needs to find new markets for its gas to replace sales into the US from the EGLNG plant as contracts expire.

Sonatrach director-general Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour regularly tours the hydrocarbons giant’s sprawling empire, rallying workers and telling journalists about Algeria’s return to producing oil and gas on a global scale, after years of corruption scandals and management inertia. On his 8 February visit to Hassi R’Mel, he announced that Sonatrach would invest $56bn in 2018-22. In an interview, he referred to discussions with Total on an unspecified $5bn project. After a long period of tensions with the French major, this is likely to be a major new petrochemicals project, giving further substance to claims Algeria is back as a force in the industry.

The Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone (PDSL) launched the country’s fourth offshore licensing round in London on 25 January, hoping to capitalise on recent oil and gas discoveries in Senegal and Ghana. Data rooms have opened in Freetown and the UK, with the support of Henley-based ERCL. Interested companies must first prequalify to submit a bid, and bids are due by noon on 28 June.PDSL director-general Raymond Kargbo told the launch event existing seismic showed Sierra Leone had the same geological structures found in Senegal and Ghana’s Jubilee field, and he was confident that Sierra Leone would become a hydrocarbons producer.

Eskom has given ABB a contract to construct two solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants. The pilot plants, each of one hectare, will be located on greenfield sites adjacent to the coal-fired power stations at

Some of the names already involved in the Sierra Leone natural resources sector are controversial. Frank Timis’ London AIM-listed African Minerals Ltd (AML) is developing the Tonkolili iron ore project, while his National Stock Exchange of Australia-listed African Petroleum Corporation has offshore exploration block SL-03.

The New York-based Revenue Watch Institute has given a positive assessment of Ghana’s Stabilisation Fund and Heritage Fund, saying they met 13 of 16 good governance fundamentals. The two funds, established under the Petroleum Revenue Management Act of March 2011, were described as featuring” clear deposit, withdrawal and investment rules, effective oversight, and other essential attributes of good governance”. The government published a reconciliation report in March this year detailing the sums passing through the Petroleum Holding Fund, from where oil money is allocated to Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the annual budget, and the two petroleum funds.

Gabon’s Direction Générale des Hydrocarbures (DGH) has insisted “everything is back to normal” following a coup attempt on 7 January. DGH deputy general manager Edgard Mbina-Kombila told a roadshow event in London on 17 January that the closing date for the country’s 12th licensing round had been put back to 30 September following industry feedback suggesting the previous closing date of 22 April was too soon. But the revised petroleum code governing the bid round has not yet been signed into law and bid evaluation criteria are still being worked out.

The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) has raised power tariffs for mining companies by 28.8% from 2 April after almost three years of dispute involving state power utility Zesco and mining companies. Most mining companies in Zambia buy electricity via the private Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC). Zesco was pushing to increase power tariffs for mines to $0.078/kWh from $0.0531/kWh but the ERB only allowed a rise to $0.068/kWh. The ERB has raised mining tariffs twice since 2007 – a period in which non-mining tariffs increased by a cumulative 96% on average.

There is a steady flow of positive news coming from Eskom, as the South African power giant seeks to restore its reputation after several very bad months.

Guinea has reached the completion point for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, paving the way for $2.1bn of debt relief.

Cairn Energy is preparing to spud a well on the Juby Maritime III Block following a dry well on the adjacent Foum Draa Block. The well will drill down some 1,000 metres below the 1969 Cap Juby heavy oil discovery in the Upper Jurassic to target a Middle Jurassic carbonate prospect. Cairn said operations would begin once the FD-1 exploration well had been plugged and abandoned. The Cajun Express semisubmersible drillship spudded the FD-1 well in late October in 1,500 metres of water, targeting a Late Jurassic/Early Cretaceous deep-water turbidite slope fan and channel complex.

While much of the world was distracted by Donald Trump’s election in the US, Rio Tinto announced on 9 November that it had suspended energy and minerals head Alan Davies and accepted the resignation of legal and regulatory affairs executive Debra Valentine after discovering $10.5m in payments to a French adviser to Guinean President Alpha Condé.Rio said it had launched an investigation and alerted regulators after becoming aware on 29 August of emails from 2011 that referred to contractual payments to an unidentified consultant relating to its Simandou iron ore project.

Anti-corruption campaigners including the London-based NGO Corruption Watch and Angola’s Associação Mãos Livres, have called on the Swiss government to reopen an investigation into a 1990s debt repayment deal between Angola and Russia. Corruption Watch, run by the former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein, released a 166-page report, ‘Deception in High Places: The Corrupt Angola-Russia Debt Deal’, on 16 April detailing how more than $700m ended up in private hands following a mid-1990s restructuring of Angolan debt to Russia. The report was presented in the European Parliament on 23 April as an example of the plundering that can take place in developing nations with the complicity of European banks and tax havens.

Algeria has been forced into retreat over its punitive windfall profits tax, marking another setback for the country’s five-year experiment with resource nationalism

Tullow Oil announced on 14 July that the Gardim-1 exploration well, drilled on the eastern flank of the Chew Bahir Basin in the South Omo licence had reached a total depth of 2,468 metres without encountering commercial oil. Tullow said the well intersected lacustrine and volcanic formations similar to those found in the Shimela-1 well on the north-western flank of the basin. Minor intervals with thermogenic gas shows were intersected just above basement. Tullow said seismic interpretation continued on separate prospects elsewhere in the licence that would be targeted by the next phase of the Ethiopia exploration campaign.