The African-focused British independent energy company, Savannah Energy, has announced a trading update for 2020, and guidance for 2021.

2020 was the first full year of operating the high margin assets in Nigeria. The company grew revenues, reduced underlying cost base and continued to provide gas that contributes to over 10% of Nigeria’s daily national average power generation.

The Chief Executive Officer of Savannah Energy, Andrew Knott, gave the update for the full year 2020 and guidance for the full year 2021. He said:

“As this FY 2020 trading update demonstrates, despite the challenging headwinds, 2020 was a milestone year for Savannah Energy. It was our first full year of operating the high margin assets we acquired in Nigeria and I am delighted to report that we have significantly exceeded all of the original financial guidance we presented to the market this year, as laid out in our corporate Key Performance Indicator statement published within our FY 2019 Annual Report. In 2020 we grew revenues, reduced our underlying cost base and continued to provide gas contributing to over 10% of Nigeria’s daily national average power generation, highlighting the resilience of the business.

Looking forward to 2021, we are providing guidance for the year for continued strong revenue generation, investments in key drilling and compression projects and an increased level of maintenance project activity versus 2020. Overall we have reduced our cost estimate for our indicative 2020-23 capital expenditure programme by around 13%, versus our previous indications and are guiding that we expect our underlying operating costs (which include maintenance expenditures) to track levels consistent with 2020 (in real terms) over the medium term. It should also be noted that our 2021 guidance excludes contributions from any new gas sales agreements or any contribution from the R3 East development project in Niger, which would be incremental to this.

I am excited around the potential for our business to grow further over the coming years, especially given the opportunity-rich West African environment in which we operate, and look forward to keeping our stakeholders up to date on the progress we make.”