Page 6 - AfrOil Week 37 2019

AfrOil PERFORMANCE AfrOil
Karpowership’s LNG-fueled plant to provide 15% of Senegal’s power
SENEGAL
KARPOWERSHIP’S 235-MW floating power plant Ayşegül Sultan will be able to meet 15% of Senegal’s needs when it comes online in Octo- ber. The vessel left Turkey this week for Sene- gal, Karpowership parent company Karadeniz Holding said, and will help the African country meet its power needs.
“We plan to use liquid fuel as bridging fuel in the first six months. At the end of the first six months, we will start to produce electricity from LNG on our ship. Thus Ayşegül Sultan will be the first project to generate electricity from LNG in Africa,” said Karpowership Trade Group chair Zeynep Harezi.
The company is also converting its floating power plant in Mozambique to LNG. It is also scheduled to start operations in 2020.
In August, Karpowership and Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) revealed their final plans to develop the 48-MW floating LNG-to-power project in Mozambique under the brand KAR- MOL. The project would involve jointly own- ing and operating an FSRU and the Irem Sultan Powership. In a world first, the FSRU would deliver regasified LNG to the powership in order to produce electricity.
Karpowership currently operates 22 float- ing power plants in 10 countries and has invested $5bn in its pioneering and innovative technology.
Harezi said that its vessels provided power quickly and reliably, stressing that the compa- ny’s vessels could all be converted from heavy fuel oil (FHO), which is highly polluting,
to cleaner natural gas.She said that this had already happened at its 480-MW vessel in Indo- nesia and would soon take place in Ghana.
The Istanbul-based company currently sup- plies 26% of the electricity produced in Ghana, 10% in Mozambique, 80% in the Gambia and Sierra Leone, and 10% in Sudan.
Harezi also said that it was constructing energy vessels with capacities of up to 2,000 MW, while 3,000-MW ships were in the plan- ning stage. “In the next five years, we plan to add 20 more energy ships with a total capacity of 5,000 MW to our fleet,” she said.
Harezi said the company was in the process of negotiating and bidding with 15 other coun- tries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.™
Analyst comments on US shale boom’s consequences for Africa
Daily Sabah
REGIONAL
US operators may be benefitting from the shale oil boom, but their gains have come at the expense of African producers, according to a Nigerian analyst.
Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani, the senior vice-president of Nigeria’s FBNQuest Merchant Bank, said last week that African suppliers of light sweet crude were facing stiff competition fromUS-basedfirmsofferingsimilargrades.In an article published by The Africa Report, she said that African companies were losing ground in Europe, Asia and other key markets.
This loss of momentum was obvious in early
September, when Angola ran into unexpected difficulties unloading some of its production, Akinkugbe-Filani said. Officials in Luanda had to cut prices for Dalia grade crude in order to find buyers for up to 15 unsold cargoes for Octo- ber delivery, she said.
Angola is not the only African producer to have encountered such challenges, she added. “Algeria,GabonandCongoarefeelingtheheat too,” she commented.
Africa might face an even steeper uphill
climb if producers do not find ways to expand
their operations closer to home, she argued. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 37 17•September•2019