Energy Archives - African Financial & Economic Data

19 Jan

Nigeria Moves Closer to Energy Overhaul With New Oil Bill

Nigeria’s House of Representatives passed a bill governing the country’s energy sector after the Senate did so in May, taking Africa’s top oil producer one step closer to a much-awaited overhaul of the key industry.

The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill now awaits President Muhammadu Buhari’s signing to become law.

The bill will “promote openness and transparency in the industry by clarifying the rules, processes, and procedures that govern the oil and gas sector,” Senate President Bukola Saraki said in a statement Thursday.

“After nearly two decades of back-and-forth, near-misses and ‘near-passages’, the 8th National Assembly finally reached a milestone.”

Delays in passing the new laws created a climate of uncertainty that has cost the country as much as $15 billion a year in lost investment, the Petroleum Ministry has said.

Lawmakers still need to pass two more pieces of legislation to complete an overhaul that will replace current laws. One focuses on new oil taxes and the other seeks to address longstanding grievances by oil-producing communities in the Niger River delta.

Saraki promised to pass those “very soon.” He said in June that the two related bills would be enacted by last month.

Nigeria holds an average 55 percent stake in joint ventures run by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp., Total SA and Eni SpA. These account for more than 80 percent of total oil production, which generates at least two-thirds of government revenue.

The West African country pumped 1.68 million barrels of crude per day in December, according to its oil ministry, and is yet to reach full capacity of 2.2 million daily following disruptions caused by militant attacks from 2016.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/south-africa-holds-rate-as-downgrade-inflation-risks-persist

15 Sep

Uganda: Govt Issues Oil Exploration License to Australians Armour Energy

Uganda has handed over the oil exploration license in the Kanywataba block in the Albertine area to an Australian company – Armour Energy Limited.

Speaking at a press conference at the Ministry of Energy offices in Kampala Thursday morning, Energy Minister Irene Muloni said the issuance of the license to Armour Energy Limited brings in a new player in Uganda’s oil and gas sector.

“This is in response to our objective as a ministry of ensuring that the country’s resource base which currently stands at 6.5 Billion barrels oil in place is expanded by further exploration efforts,” Muloni said.

She said that the key elements of the Kanywataba block deal, done in accordance with Section 58 of the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Act, 2013, includes an exploration license with an acreage of 344 square kilometer for four years split into two periods of two years each.

The other part of the deal is a minimum work programme which includes acquisition of seismic data and drilling of at least one well, an advisory committee chaired by the Petroleum Authority of Uganda, and consisting of representatives from government and the licensee to review and approve all annual exploration work programmes, budgets and production forecasts.

The other elements include payment of royalty based on the gross total daily production in barrels of oil per day – the rate of royalty ranges from 8.5% to 21% and the cost recovery limit for petroleum has been set at 65%.

Payment of a signature bonus, research and training fees, and annual acreage rental fees for the first exploration period amounting to $316,000 have been paid to the Uganda Petroleum Fund. Performances (Bank) guarantee amounting to 50% of the minimum exploration expenditure for the first exploration period is ($990,000).

“Due diligence was carried out; it required someone who is serious and determined,” Muloni said in support of handing over the license to Armour Energy Limited.

29 Aug

‘Solar key to sustainable energy supply in Nigeria,’ says report

In the oil-soaked West African nation of 187 million people, solar is slowly infiltrating every part of society in Nigeria. It is awakening entrepreneurial instincts, giving life to innovative payment models, and promising to restore at least some faith in the government’s ability to bring electricity to citizens used to frequent blackouts or no power at all.

A recent report produced by Power Nigeria, which is taking place from 5-7 September at the Landmark Centre in Lagos, highlighted the need for additional solar capacity in the country and what challenges the country faces to achieve this.

In 2017, financial closure is expected on at least some of the 14 solar plant projects announced in July 2016. If successful, they’ll bring a total of 1.2GW to Nigeria, largely in the north, far from most conventional generation capacity.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and has power capacity of roughly 5GW (at peak in February 2016), but dropped to less than half that in January 2017.

Half of Nigerians have no access to grid-based electricity. About 40% of Nigerian grid-powered businesses use supplemental energy. The rule of thumb is 1GW is needed per million people, in a fully developed economy. That means Nigeria has a 181GW deficit. The 1.2GW of solar doesn’t make a dent.

Yet Nigeria aims for renewables to supply 30% of output by 2030. The social consideration is significant in a country suffering terrorist violence in the north, energy vandalism in the south, and poverty levels of 70%. One business solution is to initially provide smart metres only to those who pay bills, and use that revenue to build the infrastructure and subsidise other end-users. Instead, there is a push to get everyone a smart meter at once.

Despite the push for utility-scale solar, much of Nigeria’s solar power may start off-grid. As Nigeria’s growing community of solar PV entrepreneurs will tell you, anyone with a diesel or petrol generator is a potential solar client. In 2016, Nigeria imported US$23m worth of solar panels, not including integrated or plug-and-play solar kits. That makes Nigeria the world’s second largest solar panel importer among emerging economies, behind India, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Most of those panels weren’t meant for utility-scale projects. Nigerians have long sought out their own electricity sources, but for most, solar is not an obvious solution. It’s deemed expensive, they can be serviced poorly, and public awareness is low.

To help tackle these issues and bring the discussion of solar to the forefront, the Power Agenda conference at Power Nigeria will dedicate a day of discussion to different aspects of the solar chain. Verticals such as rural, urban and hybrid solar will be covered, as well as a session on supporting solar in Nigeria and how pay-as-you-go and mobile payment systems are changing the power business model.

Some of the key speakers on the day are: Olu Ogunlela, co-Founder, Gridless Africa; Tinyan Ogiehor, technical advisor (Solar PV), Solar Nigeria Programme (UK DFID programme); Suleiman Yusuf, CEO, Blue Camel Energy; Ifeanyi Odoh, regional sales manager – solar business, Schneider Electric; and Wale Rafael Yusuff, head of sales – Nigeria, Clarke Energy.

The 2017 edition of Power Nigeria will be the largest to date and is set to attract over 100 exhibitors from 11 countries, offering visitors a first look of some of the latest products available on the market covering a range of products relating to power generation, transmission and distribution. This year, there has also been a significant increase in country pavilions from one to three with representation from Turkey, China and India.

Some of the standout exhibitors this year include Cummins, Polycab, GWB Energy, Schneider Electric, Sterling & Wilson and Skipper Seil.

Power Nigeria draws on the strengths of Informa Industrial Group’s geographical foothold in the Middle East and Africa through its partner events Electricx and Solar-Tec in Cairo, and Middle East Electricity in Dubai, which holds the title of world’s largest power event.

Power Nigeria will take place at a new purpose built exhibition venue in Lagos – Landmark Centre, Nigeria from the 5-7 September 2017. Visitor pre-registration can be done online at www.power-nigeria.com

from how we made it in Africa

24 Aug

Africa: Agriculture a Culprit in Global Warming, Says U.S. Research

New York — Agriculture has contributed nearly as much to climate change as deforestation by intensifying global warming, according to U.S. research that has quantified the amount of carbon taken from the soil by farming.

Some 133 billion tons of carbon have been removed from the top two meters of the earth’s soil over the last two centuries by agriculture at a rate that is increasing, said the study in PNAS, a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences.

Global warming is largely due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from such activities as burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees that otherwise would absorb greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

But this research showed the significance of agriculture as a contributing factor as well, said Jonathan Sanderman, a soil scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts and one of the authors of the research.

While soil absorbs carbon in organic matter from plants and trees as they decompose, agriculture has helped deplete that carbon accumulation in the ground, he said.

Widespread harvesting removes carbon from the soil as do tilling methods that can accelerate erosion and decomposition.

“It’s alarming how much carbon has been lost from the soil,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Small changes to the amount of carbon in the soil can have really big consequences for how much carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere.”

Sanderman said the research marked the first time the amount of carbon pulled out of the soil has been spatially quantified.

The 133 billion tons of carbon lost from soil compares to about 140 billion tons lost due to deforestation, he said, mostly since the mid-1800s and the Industrial Revolution.

But the findings show potential for the earth’s soil to mitigate global warming by absorbing more carbon through such practices as better land stewardship, more extensive ground cover to minimize erosion, better diversity of crop rotation and no-till farming, he said.

The world’s nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet.

President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris accord in May, saying it would undermine the U.S. economy and weaken national sovereignty.

Supporters of the accord, including some leading U.S. business figures, said Trump’s move was a blow to international efforts to tackle global warming that would isolate the United States.

Source from allAfrica

22 Aug

Mozambique: Gas-Fired Power Station Plans to Triple Production

Maputo — The company Gigawatt-Mocambique plans to expand the electricity generation from its gas-fired power station at Ressano Garcia, on the border with South Africa from the current 120 to 350 megawatts.

Cited by the Maputo daily “Noticias”, the Gigawatt director of operations, Nazario Meguigy, said that an additional 60 megawatts of generating capacity will be added in 2018, with an investment of about 120 million US dollars.

The project to almost triple production, to 350 megawatts, will require a further 700 million dollars, and Meguigy, who was speaking during a visit to the power station by Deputy Labour Minister Osvaldo Petersburgo, said this sum is under negotiation with several financial institutions.

For his part, the Chief Executive Officer of Gigawatt-Mocambique, Bruno Morgado, said the company intends to transfer knowledge from foreign technical staff to their Mozambican colleagues, so that Mozambicans can guarantee the company’s production.

“When the company began its operations, we drew up a plan to reduce the number of foreign workers”, said Morgado. “We are in the second year of the plan and we think that within the next three years the company’s operations will be 100 per cent managed by Mozambicans”.

He added that, whenever necessary, specialists will be hired to support the Mozambican workers in such sensitive questions as the maintenance of equipment. Currently the Ressano Garcia power station employs 112 workers, of whom 102 are Mozambican.

“We have no doubt that, within the next three years, the company will be run by Mozambican workers”, he stressed.

source allAfrica

16 Jan

UKEF supports GE Oil & Gas contract with major energy project in Ghana

UK Export Finance (UKEF) has announced that it will provide $400 million in support for a GE Oil & Gas contract with Ghana’s Offshore Cape Three Points Project

LONDON, United Kingdom, January 16, 2017

GE Oil & Gas, which is headquartered in the UK, is providing subsea production systems to the project, which will develop oil and gas fields approximately 60km offshore from the western side of Ghana’s coast. Following first gas production in 2018, the new fields are expected to continuously feed Ghana’s thermal power plants for more than 20 years.

UKEF will provide US $400 million of support to the OCTP project, including a loan under its Direct Lending Facility

Rt Hon. Greg Hands MP, Minister for Trade and Investment, said: The Offshore Cape Three Points Project will greatly improve Ghana’s energy security. Thanks to the UK Government’s support, via UK Export Finance, and our global leadership in oil and gas, UK companies are ideally placed to support Ghana’s future development and seize the huge export potential that brings.

Lorenzo Simonelli, President and CEO of GE Oil & Gas, said: This contract represents GE’s ability to invest to build local partnership, resource and infrastructure capabilities, and will utilise engineering and manufacturing expertise from the UK, across the supply chain. Export credit agency financing is an important source of support for our customers, and the MoU signed with UKEF in 2015 has helped to support this success.

The Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) project will develop gas reserves expected to generate an additional 1,100MW of power for Ghana, which will alleviate the country’s reliance on energy imports, providing long-term energy security and supporting Ghanaian industrial development. This transformational natural gas project will help the country achieve its COP21 commitments for climate mitigation by displacing heavy fuel oil use with gas – equivalent to taking 1.2 million cars off Ghana’s roads each year or planting 152 million trees.

Support for the contract is a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between GE and UKEF in 2015, affirming UKEF’s support for GE and GE’s commitment to continued investment in its UK operations.

UKEF will provide US $400 million of support to the OCTP project, including a loan under its Direct Lending Facility. This will be UKEF’s first direct loan for a project in Africa. UKEF support will finance the specialised systems and equipment, a significant proportion of which has been sourced from the UK.

OCTP is understood to be the world’s first upstream oil and gas development transaction where a European export credit agency (ECA) has supported a major hybrid finance structure comprising both project finance and reserve-based lending. As the sole ECA, UKEF played a pioneering role in establishing this precedent, reinforcing its growing reputation as one of the world’s most innovative and flexible ECAs. The transaction has been named Project Finance International’s African Oil & Gas Deal of the Year for 2016.

Total investment in the development of the OCTP are estimated to be $7.9 billion over the life of the project, represents the largest foreign direct investment in Ghana’s history. UKEF’s support is provided as part of a larger USD$1.35 billion financing package alongside that of the International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency of the World Bank Group, as well as commercial banks HSBC Bank plc, Standard Chartered Bank, Société Générale (London Branch), ING Belgium SA/NV, Natixis, Bank of China, Singapore Branch, Mizuho Bank Ltd and MUFG (Europe) N.V.