Energy

To say that Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited, or KenGen as it is more commonly recognised, plays an important role in the economic development of the African nation is, to all intents and purposes, a gross understatement. The reason for this is that KenGen alone is responsible for producing almost 80 percent of the electricity consumed in the country.

The current downstream director will take over the Anglo-Dutch energy giant on 1 January 2014, succeeding Peter Voser who will leave in March 2014 after spending 29 years with the company.

Mr Van Beurden joined the Royal Dutch Shell group of companies in 1983 and had held a number of technical and commercial roles in the upstream and downstream businesses. During his time with the group he has worked in the US, the Netherlands, Malaysia and the UK.

To many, natural gas is thought of as being the most important energy source of the future. The abundance of natural gas coupled with its environmental soundness and multiple applications across all sectors, means that it will continue to play an increasingly important role in meeting demand for energy in the years to come.

Brian Nixon has spent most of his career working for major engineering contractors. Around 25 years of his career to be exact, roughly half of those years spent in the upstream, offshore sector, with the rest in the downstream, onshore market.

The company will pay $1.52 billion for US firm Marathon Oil Corporation’s ten percent stake in the deepwater block. It comes after Sinopec purchased a five percent stake in the field from Total in 2011.

Sinopec, Asia's biggest oil refiner, said that the Angolan block has proven and probable reserves of 533 million barrels of oil. The deal is still subject to approval by Chinese and Angolan governments.

This is according to the latest report by the Wood Mackenzie energy consultancy, which says that the UK continental shelf remains one of the world's top ten areas for investment around 40 years after production started.

Describing the UK North Sea as a remarkable success story, Wood Mackenzie said spending on new projects had returned to levels last seen in the 1970s after allowing for inflation.

Qatar possesses what is the third-largest reserve of all known natural gas on the planet, behind only Russia and Iran. According to figures taken in January 2011 reserves in the state were measured at approximately 896 trillion cubic feet. This means that it contains as much as 14 percent of the world’s known natural gas.

Established in 1984, and headquartered in Doha, Qatargas is recognised today as being the largest LNG producing company in the world, with an annual LNG production capacity of 42 million tonnes per annum (MTA).

It was in July 1887 that Scottish academic James Blyth installed the world’s first electricity-generating wind turbine. Although at the time considered uneconomical in the UK, electricity generating wind turbines proved to be far more cost effective in countries with widely scattered populations, a fact that saw American inventor Charles F Brush follow up Blyth’s work some months later by building the first automatically operated wind turbine for electricity production in Cleveland, Ohio.

The event, which falls several weeks ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster than resulted in the death of 167 men, is designed to further encourage people working offshore to think about the lessons that have been learnt since the tragedy.

The keynote speaker is Lord Cullen, whose report into the tragedy led to major safety changes.

Jamaica is not lacking in natural resources – for example it is a major exporter of bauxite, the raw material for aluminium – but it is not currently known as an oil producer. In fact it has to import its oil at a rate estimated at 80,000 barrels a day if oil based products like asphalt, are included. Oil to fuel cars boats and aircraft is imported from Mexico, Venezuela and other neighbouring Caribbean countries.