All posts tagged featured

Nigeria Commissions Thermal Plants Without Fuel Supply

Section: Gas Monetization · October 22, 2013 · No comments |

By Toyin Akinosho

Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, has commissioned the second gas-fired thermal plant in two weeks without adequate gas supply.

Like the Geregu power plant he unveiled on October 4, 2013, most of the turbines in the Omotosho II power station will be idle for the next 12 months, according to sources in the ministry of power.

These are two of the 10 National Independent Power Projects (NIPP) under construction all over the country, and the President is scheduled to hop from one power plant to another, launching them in a blaze of publicity. The plants are slated to have been completed by 1^st Quarter 2014. But for 60% or more of their overall installed capacity, gas is not assured, so the government’s claims that they would add 5,280MW to the national grid is not assured in the near term, our investigation shows.

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Cobalt Energy, Short Of Target, Finalizes Angolan Well

Section: In the news · October 19, 2013 · No comments |

Sanction for early production may not come anytime soon

Cobalt Energy planned to drill six wells, then revised it to four wells, offshore Angola in 2013, all for pre-salt reservoirs, some of them to appraise the Cameia-1 discovery. The results have been mixed and only three wells have been drilled by this late in October 2013.

Whereas Cameia #2 “confirmed the extension of the same exceptional mound reservoir as seen in Cameia #1.” , the company’s drill stem test of the lowest interval drilled in the Cameia #2 well in Block 21, did not produce measurable hydrocarbons. Cobalt says “the results of this drill stem test have no bearing on the commerciality of the Cameia Mound Development Project”. While hoping that Sonangol, the Angolan state hydrocarbon company,

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Oil Traders Move Aggressively Into African Upstream

Section: In the news · October 19, 2013 · No comments |

By Toyin Akinosho

Crude oil traders are investing aggressively in the African upstream landscape. They are funding farm-ins into acreages held by independents in Ghana, operating rank wildcat assets off Cote d’Ivoire and buying oil even before the wells are drilled in Nigeria.

“If you are a serious independent with sound field development plans”, says Sam Ojibua, an energy analyst in Johannesburg, “the big Crude Oil traders are ready sources of funds for your project”.

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Chevron Returns To Drill Site In Nigeria

Section: In the news · October 16, 2013 · 23 comments |

Supo Sadiya, Executive Director overseeing Chevron onshore and shallow water assets in Nigeria

Chevron Nigeria has contracted the rig Adriatic IX for a six month drilling activity in shallow water western Niger Delta Basin. The jack-up, owned and managed by Shelf drilling, will be active on four wells in the Meren field between now and April 2014.
This marks a return of the Chevron/NNPC joint venture to shallow water drill-site in Nigeria.

Chevron has been absent in action in Nigeria’s land and shallow water rig count since KS Endeavor, a jack up-rig working on its Funiwa-5 well, exploded on January 16 2012, resulting in the death of two of the 154 personnel onboard. The company has however, been drilling on the Agbami deepwater field.

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Germans Eye West Africa’s Pipeline Market

Section: In the news · October 16, 2013 · No comments |

By Jeremiah Udoh

Vietz, the German manufacturer of pipeline equipment, is keen on taking advantage of the increasing market for piped hydrocarbons in West Africa.

“Ghana is constructing a series of pipelines, of about 140km length in total, to transport natural gas from its offshore Jubilee field to power plants in the country. British investor Victoria Oil and Gas, is feeding natural gas to manufacturing companies in Douala, Cameroon and the Nigerian state has invested over $2Billion on new pipeline infrastructure, aimed at transporting billions of cubic feet of gas from the Niger Delta basin, to power plants in the east and west of the country”, says Jaiye Doherty, the company’s representative in the sub-region.

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Imomoh Is The Keynoter At Nigerian Independents Workshop

Section: In the news · October 4, 2013 · No comments |

By Fred Akanni, Editor
Egbert Imomoh, Chairman of the London listed Afren Plc. and President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Worldwide, will deliver the Keynote address at the annual industry workshop of the Nigerian Association Of Petroleum Explorationists(NAPE) scheduled for November 10, 2013.

The theme is: From Marginal Field To Acreage Divestment: The Growth Story of the Nigerian E&P Independent.
Funsho Kupolokun, former GMD of the state hydrocarbon company, NNPC, will chair the proceedings.

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Oil Companies Line Up In Support of Literacy Campaign

Section: In the news · October 4, 2013 · 1 comment |

ExxonMobil, Midwestern Oil &Gas, Niger Delta Petroleum Resources, Pillar Oil and Energy and Mineral Resources (EMR) have all put money in support of the longest annual book reading carnival in Africa.

The Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF), scheduled November 15-17 this year, has a broad theme that resonates with the idea of Nigeria as a geographical space. Nigeria’s Centenary: The Lagos Narrative interrogates the century old effort at Nationhood since the British cobbled together the country from a number of kingdoms located north and south of the Niger river in 1914.
ExxonMobil, the world’s largest International Oil Company, is supporting the three day review of books and reading activities through its subsidiary Esso Exploration Production Nigeria, with the support of state hydrocarbon company NNPC as well as the Shell subsidiary SNEPCO, both of whom are co-venturers in a Production Sharing Contract.

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Egypt Loses Grip Of Gasfired Power Generation

Section: In the news · October 4, 2013 · 1 comment |

The thermal power plant has been at the heart of the country’s surge in domestic gas use in the last decade.
By Mohammed Jetutu, in Cairo

Egypt has a problem that most of Africa wishes they could have: its teeming population benefits directly from the energy beneath its feet.
The land of the pharaohs has gas resources in abundance-the third largest reserves on the continent- and it has converted so much of it to a range of domestic and industrial uses that it has depleted the tanks. Now it can hardly feed its export plants and it has called for import.

The country is diverting gas meant for LNG export into the domestic market. One of the two LNG projects has been mothballed. The second is struggling with output.

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South Africa Not In A Hurry To Build Mthombo Refinery

Section: Refining Gap · September 30, 2013 · No comments |

By Sully Manope

PetroSA’s proposed 300,000 BOPD crude refinery could be developed in 2021/22, but an investment decision would have to be made in 2017, it is official.

Sizwe Mncwango, chief executive of the Central Energy Fund, the parent body of the state hydrocarbon company PetroSA, says that the project, considered a medium term priority, is “viable on a standalone basis” and that there were “a lot of suitors out there who would like to associate themselves with these kinds of programmes”. Project Mthombo is to be located in the Coega industrial development zone, in the country’s Eastern Cape.

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Tullow Makes The Fourth Discovery Onshore Kenya

Section: Oil patch Sub-Sahara · September 26, 2013 · No comments |

Prospects of first oil before Uganda look better

Tullow Oil’s latest discovery onshore Northern Kenya high-grades the prospect of a fast-tracked exploration-to-development in the country.

Results of drilling, wireline logs and samples of reservoir fluid in the company’s operated Ekales-1 wildcat, located in Block 13T, “indicate a potential net oil pay in the Auwerwer and Upper Lokone sandstone reservoirs of between 60 and 100 metres”, the company said in a release yesterday. “Future flow testing aims to confirm productivity from these zones”.

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