Big oil groups that declared force majeure and quit Somalia 16 years ago will be given the chance to resume their activities under the anarchic country’s proposed hydrocarbon law.
According to a parliamentary bill, companies that held concessions before December 30 1990, would be given the right to return to those areas under new production-sharing agreements. The new production deals will set out different financial terms, exploration periods and obligations as well as new block sizes, businessday.co.za said.
“A prior grant in the form of a concession entitling the prior contractor to conduct exclusive petroleum operations shall be convertible into a production-sharing agreement,“ the draft law says.
Several western oil majors--Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron,
ENI--held Somalian exploration concessions in the 1980s before leaving in 1991 when warlords toppled Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and the country descended into lawlessness.
The draft law, awaiting parliamentary debate, gives previous concession holders a year from the time the law comes into effect to sign up for a production-sharing agreement. It was not immediately clear whether any of the western oil majors would consider returning to a country that has become a byword for violence.
The bill also nullifies any exploration deals struck after 1990--a clause that is likely to meet opposition from Somalia’s northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland, which have both signed separate agreements in the past five years.
It may also affect a production-sharing agreement signed by President Abdullahi Yusuf and China’s largest offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC, which was reported by the Financial Times last month.
“Any right to conduct petroleum operations in Somalia granted after December 30 1990 shall terminate and cease to be a binding obligation on the government,“ according to the draft law.
The interim government, formed in late 2004, is keen to attract foreign partners to develop its nascent petroleum sector, seen as one of the final frontiers for untapped energy.
Although the US energy administration says Somalia has no proven oil reserves, geologists hope to find an extension of the crude-bearing deposits that hold nearly 4-billion barrels across the Gulf of Aden under Yemen in the Middle East.
Analysts say the bill’s recognition of previous concession holders is a deliberate move to encourage the return of well-established players and to dispel any doubts over the legal status of prior deals in the Horn of Africa country.
A production-sharing agreement template says the government would receive 8 percent of revenues in cash on the first 25000 barrels of oil a day if the price was $55 or more a barrel.
On production in excess of 100000 barrels of oil a day, it would receive 14 percent of revenues.
Officials expect the draft law, approved by a council of ministers in February, to be debated in parliament shortly. If the draft is passed into law, it would give the go-ahead for the creation of a state-owned Somalia Petroleum Corporation to be 49 percent owned by Indonesia’s PT Medco Energi Internasional and Kuwait Energy Company.
The foreign companies would fund the corporation’s operations and pay all of its approved exploration and development costs. Somalia’s state oil company would then have the power to exercise the government’s right to participate in activities under production-sharing agreements for up to 30 percent, once commercial discovery has occurred.
The draft law also gives a similar right to the government of each regional state in Somalia where petroleum activities may occur, with a participation right of up to 10 percent.

Even slow-moving waves or tides can generate far more electricity than wind turbines.

It sounds like a can’t-miss proposition: harness the power of the ocean to generate clean, affordable, renewable electricity.
Still, several researchers and start-up companies say they have devised systems that will be capable of generating power with waves and tides, or other means related to the ocean. Here is rundown of some of the facts, figures and ideas behind sea power.
Water is more than 800 times denser than air at sea level. Thus, even slow-moving waves or tides can generate far more electricity than wind turbines could even if the wind blew at 110 miles per hour. Facilities thus require less real estate. Ocean power also remains far more predictable than other alternative energy sources. Solar and wind power vary with the weather. Waves are essentially a form of solar power too and thus will also vary: the sun causes wind, and the wind generates waves. Waves, however, can be tracked from far offshore, allowing computer models to predict electrical output several days in advance, CNET News.com said.
Tidal power is even more predictable because tides are created by the gravitational pull of the moon.

Where is the best place to situate wave or tidal power plants?
The US Pacific Coast, the Chilean coast and Atlantic Europe are good locations, but so are Alaska, Hawaii and the equator. Tidal power is more site-specific, but could work in most of the same areas. A start-up, Verdant Power, this year inserted the first of six prototype turbines in New York’s East River. It’s a cost/benefit trade-off, but you’ll likely be able to see a lot of these facilities from shore. Waves begin to dissipate energy when the water gets less than 200 meters deep. At 20 meters in depth, a wave might have only one third of the energy it had in deep water. Putting wave harvesting systems farther offshore, however, means that you need a longer cable to connect the harvesting system to the power grid.

How much potential power
is out there?
Ten years from now, the US could produce 10 gigawatts of wave power and 3 gigawatts of tidal power, says Roger Bedard, ocean energy program leader for the Electric Power Research Institute and an admitted optimist on the subject. That’s enough for 4.3 million homes. Bedard further estimated that there is a potential 2,100 terawatt-hours worth of wave energy off the shores of the US and 250 terawatt-hours of it could be harvested economically. That’s about 6 percent of US electrical demand. Tidal, river and stream power could replace another 3 percent. Bedard said he doesn’t know which of these ideas will succeed.

What are some of the
main approaches?
Finavera Renewables and AWS Ocean Energy have created wave power systems that rely on buoys that act as hydraulic pumps. Waves push the buoys down, which drives a turbine. When the wave passes, the buoy returns to its normal spot, only to be pushed again by the next wave.
Finavera’s buoys will stick more than 6 feet out of the water and descend more than 70 feet below the surface. AWS’ are completely submerged. The hydraulic fluid inside Finavera’s buoy is seawater while AWS’ Archimedes Water Swing relies on air. A full-scale buoy from Finavera will be capable of generating 250 kilowatts, enough for 80 homes. A 100-megawatt array of them could be squeezed into two to three square miles, said Myke Clark, vice president of policy for Finavera. The company is almost done installing a half-size prototype off the coast of Oregon and hopes to erect four of the 250-kilowatt devices off the Washington coast by 2009. AWS, meanwhile, will install a 250-kilowatt prototype off the Orkneys in Scotland in 2008 and build a field with 500-kilowatt devices in the UK by the third quarter of 2009. By 2013, it hopes to have a 100-device field. The design of the coming devices from AWS was influenced by a pilot study the company kicked off in Portugal in 2004.
Sea snake: Ocean Power Delivery is testing the Pelamis, a device 120 meters (about 395 feet) that looks like a segmented snake. When the segments bob up and down, buoys attached at their joints generate hydraulic pressure. The company has built a 2.25MW system off Portugal consisting of three 750-kilowatt Pelamis wave-energy converters and is aiming to built 5MW and 3MW systems off the coasts of England and Scotland in the next few years.
With the Wave Dragon, wave reflectors more than 100 meters long guide waves up a ramp, where the water dumps into a reservoir. The added pressure forces a turbine at the bottom to turn. The device’s developer, a company that is also called Wave Dragon, is building a 7MW prototype off of Wales in 2008 and wants to do a 77MW project in the Celtic Sea by 2010. The Wave Dragon is slack moored, so that it can flow with the power of the ocean. A 20-kilowatt prototype running off Denmark’s shore since 2003 has helped iron out the technical kinks.

Can you leverage the sea in
other ways?
European utilities have already erected offshore wind farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark. These farms--which sport turbines with blades that can measure more than 100 meters long--sit in about 30 meters of water. Offshore winds can be steadier, thus generating more power. Putting the turbines offshore also eliminates some of the “not in my backyard“ problems.
A significant portion of the US offshore wind potential is located in deep-water areas, but that would require building more robust turbines that can withstand harsher winds, waves and tides. Instead of being anchored directly into bedrock, deep-water turbines might have to be anchored to floating platforms, which in turn are anchored into earth. Corrosion and maintenance are issues, as are environmental concerns. The turbines also need to be connected to the grid via electrical transmission cables. Luckily, a large portion of the U.S. population lives near the sea. The same would go for solar power farms at sea, which could convert sunlight or heat into electricity. (Such facilities do not exist, however.)
Right now, demand for hydrogen is low and converting wave power to hydrogen and then to electricity is not cost-effective. Some have proposed delivering power generated at something like the deep sea platform described above over a submarine cable. This would eliminate the conversion inefficiencies, but then there’s the question of how far offshore you can go.

Michigan State University will partner with Ford Motor Co. for developing, low-temperature combustion designs for diesel engines using biofuel blends.

East Lansing, Michigan Research to couple powerful new biofuels with efficient automotive engines got a spark last week from the US Department of Energy (DOE). Two teams of engineers from Michigan State University (MSU)--chemical and mechanical--have been selected to negotiate for $4.7 million in grants to create new fuels from renewable resources as well as engines that can take full advantage of those next generation fuels.
The university has been selected to negotiate for $2.4 million from the DOE to partner with Ford Motor Co. for a project to develop advanced, low-temperature combustion designs for diesel engines using biofuel blends optimized for engine performance. MSU is the only university to be selected as a lead in the project in this round of $21.5 million worth of award opportunities, RenewableEnergyAccess.com said.
MSU engineers also are involved in another project with Visteon Corp., which has been selected for negotiation of an award of $2.3 million to achieve gasoline-like fuel economy when using E-85 by minimizing thermal, dynamic, volumetric and other system efficiency losses. Other partners will be the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Mahle Powertrain.
According to Dennis Miller, MSU professor of chemical engineering and materials science, who is leading MSU’s partnership with Ford, teaming up the chemical and mechanical sides of engineering can ward off some of the current problems with biofuels.
“We’re using an integrated approach, which hasn’t really been done before,“ said Miller. “These new biofuels will be more sophisticated than ethanol and biodiesel. By designing the engines at the same time, we believe we can optimize efficiency, performance, and environmental benefits.“
The chemical engineering team is Miller; Kris Berglund, University Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering and forestry; Ramani Narayan, University Distinguished Professor of chemical and biochemical engineering; and Carl Lira, associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science.
Together they’ll work on refining fuels from renewable resources such as soybean and other plant oils and woody stems and stalks from trees and other plants. A significant part of the biofuel work builds on earlier biofuel and fermentation work by Miller, Lira, Berglund and Narayan.
Much of the new work will take place at the MSU Biorefinery Training Facility at the Michigan Brewing Co. in Webberville, a state-of-the-art facility for refining a variety of biofuels, biochemicals and other bioproducts.
As the chemical engineering team designs these fuels, mechanical engineers, along with Ford, will be testing the fuels and working to create engines that can maximize the fuel performance, said Harold Schock, professor of mechanical engineering.
Schock describes the biofuels as an automotive revolution and the engine modifications as evolution.
“A lot of the details of how engines perform can have a serious influence on the improvement in efficiency,“ Schock said. “Designing the engines to accommodate new fuels and new fuel properties can make a tremendous impact. It can make a 20 to 50 percent difference in the way an engine operates.“
Schock leads the engineering team, joined by associate professor Farhad Jaberi and assistant professor Tonghun Lee. Schock also is working on the Visteon project.

The Minister for Energy, Joseph Kofi Adda has announced the commencement of work on the 400 MW Bui Hydroelectric Project. The sod cutting ceremony would take place at Bui on Friday, August, 24 2007 and will be performed by President John Agyekum Kufuor.
The Bui Dam is being constructed by the Government as one of the solutions to Ghana’s perennial shortfalls in the electric power sector.
The Minister said, “It has been 25 years since the last hydropower scheme, the Kpong Project, was completed Since then there have been efforts by previous Governments to develop the Bui site which is now the most attractive hydropower site in Ghana.“
Their attempts, he said, were at best lukewarm and consequently unsuccessful. “Our Government however has been steadfast in its resolve to develop the project and this has resulted in the securing of financing from the Chinese Government“, he said. Mr. Adda said the Bui project is being developed as a multi purpose project; not only will it be used for power generation, it would also have other use such as irrigation, fisheries and tourism, particularly eco-tourism, AllAfrica.com reported.
The irrigation component is to be implemented in the downstream reaches of the Bui site in the New Longoro area. Current irrigation potential is estimated at about 30,000 hectares, which should transform agricultural production in the middle part of the country. He said the Bui project is also to be used as a tool in the transformation of the social and economic development of the catchments area and the entire Brong-Ahafo and Northern regions.
As part of this transformation, it is planned to develop the nucleus of a modern Bui City. “Our strategy is to use the resettlement housing programme as the building block for the Bui City project“, he said.
The city project is expected to be the hub of economic activity and also the social transformation of the area.
In order to facilitate the implementation of the project, he said a detailed Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) Study has been undertaken. The required mitigation and compensatory measures have been evaluated and detailed in an environmental mitigation plan developed for the project.
Mr. Adda said the relevant stakeholder consultations have also been carried out. This process will continue throughout the construction and operational phases. There are also separate mitigation plans for the construction and operational phases of the project. He said the project has been carefully designed so as not to have any trans-boundary impacts. The area to be flooded by the reservoir to be created will be entirely within Ghana. No portion of La Cote d’Ivoire territory will be inundated even at the full supply level.
He said the necessary institutional arrangements for the development, construction and operation of the Bui project has been developed. Parliament recently passed the Bui Power Authority Bill, which provides the legal basis for the institutional arrangements.
The Bui Project, being the 3rd hydropower plant to be developed in Ghana will draw on the rich experiences of the earlier projects at Akosombo and Kpong.
The project allows for strong local participation especially during the construction phase. Minister Adda said out of an estimated project construction workforce of 3,400 workers, 2900 are expected to be Ghanaians. The Ghanaians are in the entire spectrum of the management of the project, including skilled, semi-skilled and management staff. Ghanaian companies will also benefit from the subcontracting of construction work and the supply of materials.
The Minister concluded his presentation on a note of pride: The Bui project has come to fruition as a result of the commitment of the NPP Government to develop the required infrastructure to support economic growth.