Africa has sights set on hydrocarbon haul despite global shift

Meren Energy

12/11/2021 12:50

By Yousef Saba and Raya Jalabi
    DUBAI, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Several African countries plan to
exploit their oil and gas reserves to tackle poverty and energy
shortages, representatives gathered in Dubai said this week in
the face of pressure to end fossil fuel extraction to curb
global warming.
    Officials and industry executives stressed that Africa as a
whole has a relatively small carbon footprint, which Statista
estimated accounted for 3.7% of global CO2 emissions in 2020.
    "We want to develop our resources as Africa, just as our
brothers in the West have done," John Munyes, Kenya's minister
of petroleum and mining, told the Africa Oil Week conference in
Dubai, which coincided with the second week of the United
Nations COP26 climate summit https://www.reuters.com/business/cop
 in Glasgow, Scotland.
    "Much of Kenya is renewables, we just want to tap into what
God has given us: hydrocarbons," he added.
    Across the African continent, where some 600 million people
lack electricity, both well-established and emerging producers
are seeking to accelerate hydrocarbon extraction.
    "We understand that we have to mitigate the damage to the
planet. That's why we have signed up to the energy transition,"
Thomas Camara, Ivory Coast's minister of mines, petroleum and
energy, said. 
    "But for our African nations, we have to ensure that our
populations have access to energy … We will not turn our back to
oil and energy companies so we can ensure the happiness - and
even the existence - of our populations."
    Some two dozen African countries pitched their energy
sectors to investors during the event in Dubai. 
    OPEC member Angola, where production peaked in 2008 and has
been steadily declining for the past half-decade, plans to
develop more fields including through licensing rounds for
onshore blocks in 2023 and offshore blocks in 2025. 
    Output in 2031 is projected to slightly exceed last year's
roughly 1.3 million barrels a day.
    Ghana, which discovered oil in 2007 and began extraction at
the end of 2010, will channel investments to oil and gas
development to then use the proceeds to invest in infrastructure
and social welfare such as healthcare and education, its deputy
energy minister, Andrew Egyapa Mercer, said.
    "We believe strongly in oil and gas, and in particular gas"
to ensure reliable energy baseloads, he added.
    
    CLOCK TICKING
    Western oil and gas companies looking to develop deposits in
Africa face growing pressure over environmental concerns, which
are leading them to accelerate plans as the world transitions to
renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind.
    "We have to come up with processes that enable us to convert
a discovery into production as quickly as we can, because the
clock is ticking. The clock is ticking in terms of the energy
transition," said Paul McCafferty, senior vice president Africa
at Norwegian energy major Equinor  EQNR.OL .
    Industry executives said among the challenges they now face
was securing sufficient capital for hydrocarbon projects.
    Top oil exporters Angola, and to a lesser extent Nigeria,
are facing crude production declines due to lack of investment
in expensive deepwater oil fields, partly because oil companies
are allotting less funding to fossil fuels.
    Africa Oil Corp  AOI.TO  CEO Keith Hill said the energy
transition process needs to be balanced and that it was more of
a 30-year process than a five or 10-year one.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nS8N2QO03F
    For Uganda, hydrocarbons are necessary to reshape the
economy, its energy minister said, and it is counting on a
pipeline through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean coast that will
help Uganda export its crude.
    "We have a duty to provide jobs for our people. We have a
duty to make sure that the distribution of electricity goes to
the last person," Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said.

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 (Reporting by Yousef Saba and Raya Jalabi; Writing by Ghaida
Ghantous and Yousef Saba; Editing by Alexander Smith)
 ((Yousef.Saba@thomsonreuters.com; +971562166204; https://twitter.com/YousefSaba))