Exploration, Production and Africa’s Frontier Markets

Exploration, Production and Africa’s Frontier Markets

With production declines presenting newfound challenges for Africa, stakeholders are pushing for enhanced exploration to help mitigate this trend. Despite global calls to transition to renewable energy sources, Africa still needs its oil and gas reserves if it is to meet its development goals and make energy poverty history by 2030. In an exclusive interview with the African Energy Chamber (AEC) (www.EnergyChamber.org), Tim O’Hanlon, Senior Advisor for the Oslo-listed energy and power company, Panoro Energy, provides critical insight into Africa’s changing energy sector.

What will this production underperformance in Nigeria, Libya, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and African countries mean for the continent as a whole?

For the individual countries involved it is definitely a significant setback and a direct blow to their economies since they have probably been too slow at diversifying away from oil and gas and investing the windfall resource revenues of the last decades into more sustainable sectors like agriculture, industry and services. But for the majority of Africa’s 54 countries with little or no production, I honestly don’t see much impact, one way or the other.

What do you feel are the primary reasons influencing production decline in Africa?

Oil production is falling across the Continent for a number of