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While governments have rediscovered their enthusiasm for natural gas, financiers remain reticent. A lack of financial support has hamstrung new entrants to the energy space.

“ESG has had a massive impact. It’s extremely challenging to raise capital,” United Oil and Gas CEO Brian Larkin said. “We’re fully funded from cash flow but an acquisition that might need to bring in cash looks more challenging.”

Monitor Exploration CEO Andrew Shrager agreed saying that institutional investors’ focus on ESG and the energy transition made financing “very difficult” for independents.

“Investors are only prepared to back companies looking to buy production and who can say they’re doing something on the environmental front. That’s made it difficult to look at exploration,” Shrager said.

Savannah Energy and Seplat Energy are two companies that have managed to buck the trend, focused on West Africa.

“It’s still a buyers’ market. Companies that have production and cash flow, like Seplat and Savannah, have opportunities,” Riddle continued.

The majors have “left a lot of crumbs on the table”, United’s Larkin said. “There’s a lot of opportunities for small companies with track records, strong boards and capable executives. There’s so many opportunities right now – I’m the most excited I’ve ever been, particularly in Africa and South America.”

Larkin went on to say that exploration was seeing a return of sentiment. United, he said, takes a managed risk approach, where 90% of its investments go into production and 10% into exploration.

“As the production business grows we can take on more exploration risk. We understand that everyone wants production but it’s the cyclical nature of the business. There have been very few large discoveries in recent years.”

Full article https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/africa/398324/africa-esg-buyers-energy/

Part III
THE GRID AND THE GRIDLOCK
Seven of the projects elected to have a guarantee from the World Bank and the African Development Bank, but the banks said they would not provide the support at the quoted 11.5 cents tariff. After the presentation made by Zakari on Wednesday, some of the stakeholders expressed reservations about what they considered “a very ambitious target” date of June 2022 for the projects to be closed financially, sources told TheCable. Since 2016, the lack of the sovereign guarantees from the World Bank and the African Development Bank have discouraged financial institutions from accepting to fund the projects. More people also raised issues with the ability of the national grid to take the 1GW to be produced by the solar projects. Although reinforcements were scheduled to be done, the paucity of funds and the lack of prioritisation of the projects mean that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) does not have the capacity to take on the 1GW. This is made worse by the fact that the TCN is yet to complete the 14-km Oshogbo line that was meant to evacuate Azura power plant years after the plant completed construction and is injecting power onto the grid. Nigeria continues to pay for the stranded production. Zakari told the meeting that the ministry of power has already set aside N400 billion for the projects, but the promoters asked how the figure was arrived at — particularly because the PPAs are for 20 years. The DisCos have also said they cannot recover the 7.5 cents tariff from consumers and will resist any attempt to pass on cost to them. The federal government is once again at the risk of paying for power that Nigerians will not be able to use.
https://www.thecable.ng/the-insider-fg-set-to-guarantee-1bn-new-solar-projects-despite-choking-under-take-or-pay-deals

Part II
CLEAN ENERGY, DIRTY ECONOMICS

This is not the first time this solar project has faced a flurry of questions. In August 2016, when Babatunde Fashola was minister of power, he announced that power purchase agreements (PPAs) had been signed with 14 solar photovoltaic projects. Not only were some of the projects unlicensed, the tariff was fixed at 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which was considered extortionate. At the time, tariffs for similar projects in Africa were between 4 cents and 6 cents. Kemi Adeosun, then minister of finance, who was not at the signing ceremony, refused to approve the sovereign guarantee. In a letter dated June 14, 2017 and seen by TheCable, she hinged her refusal on the reasons stated in the ministry’s guidelines to the industry on issuance of sovereign guarantees to the industry. She said only projects that passed the ministry’s debt sustainability analysis (DSA) would get a guarantee. The projects must also have emerged through a competitive procurement process, she said, and all the power produced must be deliverable to consumers. This was to prevent a situation where the power produced would be “stranded”, in this case because of national grid capacity inadequacies. She also insisted that all the agencies that would approve PPAs must be involved in the process right from the conceptual modelling of the project. The 14 solar projects were asked to accept a naira-denominated put-call option agreement (PCOA) and to reduce their tariff from 11.5 cents to 7.5 cents. Only two of the projects accepted the threshold of the ministry of finance, TheCable learnt, as the rest declined, insisting that they would only have a dollar-denominated PCOA. This was despite the fact that the naira PCOA included a clause that they would be paid any true-ups — or shortfalls — arising from the conversion of naira to dollars. Following the acceptance by Afrenergia and CT Cosmos, Adeosun approved a naira-denominated PCOA for the two companies at the reduced tariff of 7.5 cents.

Part I
Despite getting its fingers burnt and running into debt over existing power deals, the federal government is set to provide more sovereign guarantees to 14 new solar power projects.

Nigeria is currently choking under multi-million dollar “take or pay” power and gas deals which Nigerians are unable to fully benefit from largely because of national grid limitations. As a result, Nigeria remains tied to a $10 million monthly “take or pay” deal with Accugas Ltd to supply gas to the Calabar Generation Company Ltd, owned by the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Ltd. Also, the country has to make a minimum monthly payment of $30 million to Azura-Edo Power because of a sovereign guarantee.

Nigeria has defaulted a number of times because of paucity of funds, with Accugas and Azura threatening to activate clauses in the agreements that would have damaged the country’s international credit rating. Despite these financial burdens, the ministry of finance is set to commit Nigeria to another guarantee of $1 billion for the production of 1GW (1,000MW) by 14 solar projects. Nigeria currently has the capacity to generate about 12,000MW but the national grid — which transmits power from plants (GenCos) to distribution companies (DisCos) — cannot take more than roughly 5,000MW. Because of the handicap, the grid has recorded a number of collapses in recent times, plunging the entire country into darkness. Many power plants have had to underproduce by shutting down turbines.

‘THE GAME CHANGER’
On Wednesday last week, Abubakar Aliyu, the minister of power, played host to government officials and project developers to resolve the “impasse” around the solar project since 2016. The meeting was chaired by Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning. In attendance were Ahmad Zakari, special adviser to the president on infrastructure, financiers, development partners, and officials of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) and DisCos. After the meeting, Zakari announced on Twitter what he called the “game changer” of a $1 billion deal to stabilise power. “As we continue to work on Emergency Measures to stabilize power we can’t forget the medium term. Working with @ZShamsuna (minister of finance) @HMPowerNG (ministry of power) we structured a meeting for $1b investment for 1000MW of Solar stalled since ‘16. We expect some on grid by ‘23,” he tweeted. “The projects range from 50MW to 100MW across Sokoto, Kano, Jigawa, Nasarawa, Abuja, Bauchi…some of these states will be joining the league of states with on-grid power plants for the first time. These 1GW of Solar projects will be a game changer and a harbinger for more projects.” He said the project will accelerate government’s commitment to achieving 30 per cent of grid power from renewable energy sources by 2030.

Some pretty chunky trades at the end - a tad more than the ISA allowance NtM ;-) Volume up quite a bit today and fortunately the sp followed suit. Would be nice to see the back of the seller and get a clear run upwards, but that's probably just the optimism from the first glass of wine kicking in :-)

Ha ha Tier, that made me chuckle. I guess CEO's like him as they can get their message out and he doesn't ask any awkward questions, so in some senses it fulfills a need. At least Malcy asks some intelligent questions even though he's not exactly one to push for an answer if the interviewee is vague. To be fair to AK he doesn't duck questions even if sometimes he can't provide an answer due to restrictions around confidentiality. Do wish he'd get on with the refinancing though!!

Justin Waite is a total embarrassing pseudo-journalist who knows f all about the companies he interviews. He has a repeatable formula that my dog could better which is:

'Andrew (or whoever), tell us a bit about the company and what you do'
.......
'Lovely, wonderful, now this RNS , tell us more about it'
.........
'Amazing, and give us 3 reasons why people should invest in Savannah (or whoever)'

TOUCHSTONE EXPLORATION INC
Investor Update
31st Mar 2022 at 1:00pm BST

You have to register through this link
https://www.investormeetcompany.com/

Another interesting move for Savannah as they continue to develop their business in Niger as well as in other neighbouring countries. The move is serious for Savannah, they are constructing and operating Niger’s first wind farm thereby harnessing this excellent resource in-country. They are also creating jobs, cutting energy costs for Nigeriens and avoiding over an estimated 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Plans for a proposed installed power generation capacity of some 250 megawatts are expected to be sanctioned next year with first power generation in 2025. The Niger Minister for Energy calls this deal ‘transformational’ which can be an overused word but on this occasion very much suits the fact that the wind farm is set to increase Niger’s power generation capacity by 40%, not only diversifying Niger’s energy mix but also opening up the potential for Niger to export power to neighbouring countries. The project is also taking advantage of Niger’s expected connection to the WAPP in 2023, the high voltage interconnection network, which will improve grid stability important for renewable projects and facilitate power exchanges between Niger and other countries in the region.

With the investment provided by SAVE the country will be able to embrace clean power which will improve and diversify the economy in Niger and hugely benefit the population.

'as soon as possible' & 'quickly' - sounds good to me! Thanks Zengas.

Looks very plausible PF, especially given his dob is listed as 1975 on Companies House and he started secondary school in 1986 according to LinkedIn. His credentials look the sort that you would want for leading a Renewables initiative in Africa.

Over 120m purchased if you include those by the new shareholder RWC Asset Advisors. VR Global had 57m so there is still a large rump of over 60m that have been sold by someone other than the major shareholders. Would be interesting to find out for sure!

TOUCHSTONE EXPLORATION INC
Investor Update
31st Mar 2022 at 1:00pm BST

You have to register through this link
https://www.investormeetcompany.com/

Also, for info, the total no. of shares in issue has increased from 1,248,031,868 to 1,306,098,819 due to the allocation of Employee Benefit Trust shares after the General Meeting, so the %'s are slightly different now, though not materially.

Mt, I think it's safe to assume that VR Global have sold out as they RNS'd on 23rd Feb they had 4,909,183 shares remaining. We then saw transactions that same day of
6:10:48 1m 27p
16:15:06 1m 27p
16:15:27 2m 27p
16:15:55 909,183 27p.

Total 4,909,183 @ 27p.

Also, RWC Asset Advisors have been added to the major shareholders list with 44.8m (3.59%)

Update on the website.

Main changes:

Ingalls & Snyder +28m
Cavendish Fiduciary Jersey Limited +49m
RWC Asset Advisors (New) +48m

Overall +120m

Jimmyjohn,

yes, URU has potential, I don't think anyone is saying it hasn't. As for it being a ticking time bomb, it must have the biggest battery in the world as it's been ticking for over 10 years. The only way this makes you rich is if you have significant shares and can organise a pump and dump, as HedgeHog/InvestingGenius (sic) have been trying to do over the last few months, or you are quite youthful and will live long enough to see it actually developed.

If they actually provide an independently verified drill report via RNS that moves the resource away from inferred and indicated up to measured then it's possible that it could attract significant investment. Until then it will just be pie in the sky, so my advice to people wanting in is to wait for something tangible. Yes, they may lose out on some price gains but they won't risk being taken to the cleaners by the pump and dump brigade who are obviously active.

Regarding MRS, I did not lose my investment, I was invested as it was a good solid mining business but sold out at a profit the second Zorbas was appointed NED. I followed what happened next, the Alerion scam and then administration. That's what Zorbas does, he has no intention of actually running a business but finding other ways to scam people out of their money. After all it's all he knows. So I'm not here as a bitter ex investor with a grudge. Aim investments are a very small part of my overall portfolio. I currently only hold one AIM stock where I took a significant position last year when prices where in the 7p-10p range. I'll be holding there for the forseeable.

Unlike bitter investors who have sold out I don't actually want URU to fail. I empathise with the investors who got sucked in on the 4.5p is the floor pump a few years ago (I was one but sold out with an annoying loss) so would like this to be developed and for OFD and others to at least get their money back. What I take exception to is people with no morals like HH/IG who orchestrate these p&d campaigns with no feelings for the novice investors they suck in and leave high and dry, and Zorbas who hasn't even heard of the word.

So I will carry on posting. It won't just be negativity for the sake of it, if we see actual RNS'd independent developments I will be as pleased as you. But I will carry on pointing out the p&d tactics.

Lol, you can't bring yourself to say something against John can you. You do call him John don't you? You're as easy to see through as your alter ego Investing Genius. Same agenda, same writing style.

Anyway, I'll be here as long as URU exists, to let any newbies know what your game is. Sorry if that is inconvenient, but it's a small amount of my time and I get great pleasure from thinking in some small way I am helping to ensuring Zorb and his mates can't sell the stock they have at the expense of others :-)

It's very simple, based on past history any company with Zorbas involved is not investable until there is some serious tangible evidence to persuade otherwise. Do you not research directors when you make an investment? If you do, please explain to me how you think this is investable with Zorbas all over it? Please don't try and use other directors as the reason, explain why Zorbas is investable.

HH, your challenge is irrelevant. We're discussing URU, not URU cf other mining stocks. I have never said no drilling was taking place so get your facts right. All I have said is investing on the basis of an interview, not RNS'd, with Zorbas in the picture is utter stupidity.

I see you're having to fall back on the old 'why are you here' argument, which is a bit sad.