Energy

Construction of the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset will be overseen by a consortium led by France’s EDF Energy and including Chinese companies China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear Power Corporation as minority shareholders in the project. The involvement of the two latter companies comes in the wake of an announcement by the UK Chancellor that Chinese firms would be allowed to invest in civil nuclear projects in the UK going forward.

Hydro-Québec owns and operates 60 power-generating facilities across the province. It was created in 1944. “At that time it was essentially an electricity distribution operation, with some generation in the greater Montreal region,” explains President and CEO Thierry Vandal, who has led the company since 2005, having joined it in 1996. “That was the situation until 1963 when, through a number of acquisitions, the corporation grew to develop a footprint which covers all the territory of Québec. Hydro-Québec became a regional player.”

When President Jacob Zuma appointed Elizabeth Dipuo Peters to the post of Energy Minister in 2009 one of the key performance areas he asked her to progress was getting greater private sector involvement in power generation.

Since we last spoke to Roman Crookes, project manager of the R105 billion Medupi power station, he has refereed a game of two halves. The press has had a field day throughout the three years since June 2010, and any observer could be forgiven for thinking the site has been a battlefield. However in every problem lies an opportunity, and it was good to get a chance to hear firstly about the achievements of the project, then about the good that has come from the setbacks that have been encountered.

The story of Caribbean Oceanic & Terrestrial Energy Equipment Ltd (COTEEL) is a classic tale of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are defined as people who see an opportunity and seize it: but to be realistic they also need the skills and technical know-how to deliver to the customer base they have identified. It was in 2011 that it dawned on husband and wife team Selvan and Tricia Ramnarace Moonan, each of them a high flier in their different fields, that they could do a better job for the Caribbean oil and gas sector than the incumbent service providers.

The $2 billion project will see Russia’s state-run nuclear energy corporation Rosatom build, operate and provide fuel for the plant, as well as process its spent fuel in Russia. In return Russia is helping fund the project to the tune of $500 million of Russian Credit. The reactors at Rooppur in Pabna district, 120 kilometres north of Dhaka, are expected to operate for 60 years with options to extend by another 20 years.

The first mains electricity that flowed in Zambia came from a small coal fired station in the capital Livingstone, but even that did not cover the entire city. Zambia had to wait till 1938 to get its first hydro-electric power from that mighty power source, the Victoria Falls. Of course the copper mines needed power, but up to the middle of the last century they had to provide their own generation facilities.

Established in November 1944, with the construction of the Compostilla thermal plan in Ponferrada, in the province of Leon in Spain, Endesa is today one of the largest electric power companies in the world. As well as being Spain’s largest utility company, it is also the leading private multinational enterprise in Latin America and a major player in the gas sector.

The agreement will see CNOOC develop the Kingfisher oil field over a period of four years. The field itself is thought to hold some 635 million barrels of oil, of which 196 million are recoverable.

According to Peter Lokeris, Uganda's junior energy minister, the field will have an initial capacity to produce between 30,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil per day.

Boasting one of the highest growth rates and per capita incomes in all of Latin America, Trinidad and Tobago is among the wealthiest and most developed nations in the Caribbean. It is also the leading Caribbean producer of oil and gas, and its economy is heavily dependent upon these resources, with them accounting for approximately 40 percent of its GDP and 80 percent of its exports.