Equatorial Guinea’s minister of mines and hydrocarbons on Thursday called for a common project of the Portuguese-language countries for gas exploration, stressing the need for a longer energy transition in some African countries.
“Hydrocarbon producing countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Mozambique or Brazil and Portugal, as a major consumer, it is very important that we can work on a coordinated project at the CPLP level to be able to exploit the gas for use in our economies,” Gabriel Obiang Lima said.
The minister was speaking today at the conference centre in Simpopo, Equatorial Guinea, on the second day of a business summit promoted by the Confederation of Businesspeople of the Community of Portuguese-language Countries (CPLP).
“It will be increasingly difficult to get funding to develop our [oil] products because worldwide there is a great motivation to carry out the energy transition from hydrocarbons to renewable energy,” he noted.
But despite this, he said, in countries such as Equatorial Guinea and others in Africa, this transition will have to take at least another 20 years.
“Only then will we be at the level of developed countries,” he said.
The Equatorial Guinean minister was speaking at a panel with government officials from Guinea Bissau, Cabo Verde and Sao Tome and Principe, as well as representatives from Portugal, Brazil and Mozambique on the role of governments in attracting foreign investment.
Portuguese socialist member of parliament Luís Moreira Testa said that, in the new advent of renewable energy, Portugal has the potential to move from energy consumer to producer.
“Hydrocarbons will serve in the coming decades as transition fuels. Portugal is a major consumer of natural gas, mainly from Algeria, and the new generation of natural gas consumption in Europe foresees the mandatory inclusion of green hydrogen,” he said.
Testa said the pipelines that bring gas from Algeria may soon take the gas produced in Equatorial Guinea or Mozambique cut with green hydrogen produced in Portugal.
“This could be a great opportunity for energy communion in the CPLP,” he said.
In another area, Cabo Verde’s minister of trade, industry and energy, Alexandre Dias Monteiro, considered mobility within the Portuguese-speaking community as a critical factor for creating a favourable framework for business and foreign investment.
“Mobility is a critical factor for contacts and exchanges between companies and businesspeople,” he said, stressing the progress made in this area in recent years, which should make it possible to sign a mobility agreement at the next summit of heads of state and government, in July in Luanda.
Guinea-Bissau’s economy minister, Vitor Mandinga, advocated the creation of an investment promotion agency at the community level to link up with agencies in each of the countries.
“This mechanism is essential to make legislation on investment more homogenous and the distribution of investment opportunities between countries more harmonised,” he said, adding that businesspeople lacked transversal information about the CPLP as a whole.
Sao Tome’s foreign minister, Edite Ten Jua, noted the importance of creating a climate of trust for attracting investment, particularly in terms of legal protection and tax justice, as well as simplifying administrative procedures, along with the existence of infrastructure and means of transport and communications.
Equatorial Guinea is Friday hosting the first business summit of the EC-CPLP, which brings together 250 businesspeople from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and Cabo Verde.
