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CERAWEEK ‘Energy transition? Leave us out,’ say African energy leaders | Reuters

A ver­ti­cal gas flar­ing fur­nace is seen in Ughel­li, Delta State, Nige­ria Sep­tem­ber 16, 2020. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/FilesRegister now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterHOUSTON, March 9 (Reuters) — Devel­op­ing coun­tries should not have to tar­get renew­able ener­gy sources and turn away from fos­sil fuels, Niger­ian and Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea ener­gy offi­cials said on Wednes­day, join­ing oth­er emerg­ing oil-pro­duc­ing nations reluc­tant to embrace the glob­al ener­gy tran­si­tion trend.Emerging economies must con­tend with high­er fuel costs at a time when mil­lions lack access to reli­able ener­gy sources while also deal­ing with extreme cli­mate events.Some 900 mil­lion peo­ple in the world, most of them in Africa, still have no access to ener­gy for basic needs, Nige­ri­a’s oil Min­is­ter Timipre Mar­lin Syl­va said dur­ing the CER­AWeek ener­gy con­fer­ence in Houston.Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegister“We are still in tran­si­tion from fire­wood to gas,” Syl­va said. “Please allow us to con­tin­ue with our own transition.“Equatorial Guinea Min­is­ter of Mines and Hydro­car­bons Gabriel Obiang Lima echoed those con­cerns, say­ing pres­sure over renew­ables is “very unjust”, with a dis­cus­sion on how to tran­si­tion only pos­si­ble after the ener­gy secu­ri­ty cri­sis is over.The 38 mem­bers of the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD), some of the rich­est coun­tries world­wide, along with Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, account for more than two-thirds of the world’s oil demand. The rest, which includes Africa, most of Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca, accounts for just 31%, accord­ing to OPEC data.“Every emerg­ing econ­o­my has to have the right to access reli­able, safe ener­gy,” said Tengku Muham­mad Tau­fik, pres­i­dent and CEO of Malaysi­a’s state-owned Petronas.Other coun­tries with oil dis­cov­er­ies still in devel­op­ment, includ­ing Ghana, Guyana and Suri­name, also have said they can­not be expect­ed to give up the chance to ben­e­fit from oil and gas that helped build more devel­oped economies.“They want all of us, includ­ing those of us with­out food, to car­ry the bur­den of tran­si­tion,” Niger­ian Nation­al Petro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion (NNPC) gen­er­al man­ag­er Bala Wun­ti said.Nigeria now faces a dou­ble blow from high prices of gas for cook­ing that it imports and lack of invest­ment in its oil indus­try, Syl­va said, as banks and funds have been push­ing to restrict invest­ment in oil glob­al­ly to cut green­house gas emis­sions and fight cli­mate change.Nigeria has had to cut oil pro­duc­tion from 1.8 mil­lion bar­rels per day (bpd) to less than 1.5 mil­lion bpd due to lack of financ­ing to main­tain its facil­i­ties, Syl­va said.That lost pro­duc­tion could have helped con­tribute to glob­al sup­ply as the world now seeks alter­na­tives to Russ­ian oil after buy­ers halt­ed pur­chas­es over its inva­sion of Ukraine, he said. Rus­sia calls its actions in Ukraine a “spe­cial operation”.Investors back­ing renew­able fuels have cut financ­ing for oil projects, reduc­ing pro­duc­tion of oil, gas and coal faster than renew­able sources of ener­gy could replace them, push­ing prices up, he said.“It was expect­ed we were going to arrive at this point where we have an ener­gy cri­sis,” Syl­va said. “There is a gap.“Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterReporting by Sab­ri­na Valle; Edit­ing by Ken­neth Maxwell and David Gre­go­ri­oOur Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.