News & Analysis

Can African oil producers help the world end reliance on Russian Oil and Gas?

Unlock­ing Africa’s oil and gas poten­tial is now imper­a­tive against the back­drop of the war in Ukraine and the result­ing crude, diesel, and gas sup­ply crunch. This has ren­dered Euro­pean depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy unten­able, cre­at­ing a major oppor­tu­ni­ty for Africa to posi­tion itself as a cru­cial option to increase the sup­ply to the glob­al ener­gy mar­kets. How­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges remain for the continent’s hydro­car­bon pro­duc­ers to sud­den­ly ramp up their pro­duc­tion due to infra­struc­ture, finance, and tech­nol­o­gy deficits.
Coun­tries with major LNG resources, such as Nige­ria, Ango­la, Libya, and Alge­ria, suf­fer from lim­it­ed and under­de­vel­oped pipeline net­works, refiner­ies, jet­ties, ter­mi­nals, and ports. Addi­tion­al­ly, incen­tiviz­ing for­eign invest­ment is often prob­lema­tized by a host of risk fac­tors, includ­ing polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, local inse­cu­ri­ty issues and finan­cial insti­tu­tions shift­ing invest­ments from fos­sil fuels to renew­ables. Final­ly, secur­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy to facil­i­tate local con­tent devel­op­ment has proven cost pro­hib­i­tive giv­en the reliance on for­eign intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and the con­tin­u­al brain drain of key local human capital.
All the above issues will be dis­cussed at the 8th Africa Petro­le­um Con­gress and All the above issues will be dis­cussed at the 8th Africa Petro­le­um Con­gress and Exhi­bi­tion (CAPE VIII) tak­ing place from 16–19 May 2022 in Luan­da, Ango­la. The con­gress is orga­nized by the African Petro­le­um Pro­duc­ers Orga­ni­za­tion (APPO), the gov­ern­ment of the Repub­lic of Ango­la (for the first time), and AME Trade Ltd. The three-day event will be cen­tered around the theme of “Ener­gy Tran­si­tion: Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties in the African Oil and Gas Indus­try,” and assem­ble experts from the nation­al, region­al, and inter­na­tion­al ener­gy and oil and gas indus­tries to delib­er­ate the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties of the ener­gy tran­si­tion and the future of the oil and gas indus­try in Africa.
CAPE VIII will unfold against the reces­sion of the glob­al pan­dem­ic that exac­er­bat­ed record pro­duc­tion declines across African hydro­car­bon pro­duc­ing coun­tries from 2020 to 2021. The annus hor­ri­bilis was com­pound­ed by under-invest­ment in explo­ration activ­i­ties, leav­ing sev­er­al of the continent’s biggest ener­gy play­ers strug­gling to cope with the post-lock­down surge in demand for hydro­car­bons. For­tu­nate­ly, APPO’s ambi­tion to estab­lish the con­ti­nent as an ener­gy hub regained sig­nif­i­cant head­wind with a stel­lar upstream devel­op­ment out­look for 2022 and beyond.
The con­gress will be the ide­al plat­form for Africa’s lead­ing oil and gas pro­duc­ers to con­front the fore­go­ing chal­lenges and engen­der solu­tions to max­i­mize its oil and gas resources. Amid the dri­ve by devel­oped economies towards decar­boniza­tion and net-zero poli­cies, attend­ing ener­gy stake­hold­ers will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rein­force the case for region­al inte­grat­ed sup­ply chains and pool­ing resources to lever­age the cat­alyt­ic pow­er of hydro­car­bons in a sus­tain­able manner.
Sup­port­ed by count­less multi­na­tion­als across the ener­gy val­ue chain and nation­al oil com­pa­nies, CAPE VIII will fea­ture illu­mi­nat­ing insight from a range of illus­tri­ous keynote speak­ers, who will mold the future land­scape of ener­gy in Africa and beyond.Source: AME Trade Ltd