Featured, Oil & Gas
By Anthony Isibor
OMAR Farouk Ibrahim, Secretary General African Petroleum Producers Organisation, APPO, has said that Africa will remain second and third players in the oil and gas industry even in their own countries if they continue to follow the positions of developed countries on renewable energies.
Farouk, who made the assertion on Tuesday at the the 8th Sub-Saharan International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, SAIPEC, in Lagos.
He stated that if the continent fails to produce its own energy and renewable, then it will be compelled to export to Europe and America the little that it produces because they have the financial resources to buy off our produce.
“The point we are making is that if we want Africa to move forward, we need to put on a new thinking cap because for so long our leaders and our intellectuals have become just takers of prescriptions made outside the continent.
“The earlier we begin to seriously scrutinize the problems and the solutions that we are given, the better for our continent.
“We have been criticising what the World is telling Africa to do, also criticising our leaders for accepting that prescription.
“When we say that we don’t agree with certain positions which others may prescribe for us, which our leaders have come to accept, and because these institutions have been built within our country, forces that they pay to propagate those positions, we are saying as alarmist that our fear is that if we allow ourselves to be bamboozled into accepting all of these things and abandoning what we have, for the expectation of what we don’t have, we are going to be the biggest victims in the world. Because when we are distracted with anything, those with the resources to buy will take over everything.
“It is exactly what is happening today, we produce and 75% of the oil that we produce in Africa is exported outside Africa and 45% of the gas that we produce also goes outside Africa.
“This is so because our government needs that oil money to support their budget, and their ostentatious living. All of us are guilty of this; we want to do things that make us more relevant to foreign economies, we want to wear European -American suites, we want to go to Europe for holidays, we want to send our children over for education, we want to go for medical tourism, ” he said.
He explained that these actions are the things that eat our foreign exchange and we rather export our crude oil than refine and use in your country because “If you do, you get naira and you do not want naira, you want foreign exchange.
“This is not peculiar to Nigeria, it is the same in all of Africa countries. The only country that has succeeded to a large extent is Algeria. Algeria runs its oil and gas without relying on external support in terms of going to take money, FDI’s, loans etc,” he added.
Farouk, however, noted that APPO is working to change this narrative.
“We are not just talking, but we are acting. I want to inform this meeting that in the last ministerial conference of APPO, approval was given to ensure that by the end of March we’ll take a decision on which country is going to host the headquarters of the African Energy Bank.
“We have also been given the mandate to ensure that the African energy bank becomes operational before the first half of this year,” he added.
He also disclosed that on Finance and technology expertise, APPO is working towards ensuring that it creates regional centres of excellence across different regions of the continent.
“We do not believe that Nigeria or Kenya or Mozambique , or any of these individual countries have what it takes to be able to say that it has mastered the technology in the oil and gas industry.
“I must admit that some countries have gone very far, Nigeria is one, Algeria is another, but this not withstanding, Nigeria cannot do it alone. And that is why we are coming together as a continent to develop these various institutions so that it may be established in Nigeria or Algeria or Angola, it belongs to all of us.
“We commend Nigeria for its leadership with the Sub Saharan Africa Gas Pipeline, we are focusing today on developing the Central African Pipeline System, CAPS. Its going to bring in European-African countries together through the pipelines for oil for gas, and for fuel.
“Don’t say that we are in West Africa. It is going to benefit you. Because once that network has been done, you are in a position to take the West Africa Gas Pipeline or the Sub Saharan Africa Gas Pipeline to Chad, which is in central Africa and if you don’t get a market in the whole of Asia, you get a market in central Africa.
“Don’t tell me that Central African doesn’t have money; they are too poor to buy energy. All of us are too poor to buy energy today. And the earlier we fight that and empower our people to have access to energy, the better for us.” he added.
A.I
Tags: Anthony Isibor APPO Omar Farouk Ibrahim SAIPEAC2024
