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Natural Gas: Europe Looks to Africa to Diversify Supply with Interest in Maputo

Natural Gas: Europe Looks to Africa to Diversify Supply with Interest in Maputo

European countries are looking at gas from Africa with renewed interest, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the need to diversify suppliers of this key energy for the continent.

“Current world events are demonstrating the vital role that natural gas can play in the energy security of nations and regions,” BP oil company head Gordon Birrell, who is developing a liquefied natural gas project off the coast of Mauritania and Senegal that has already received visits from the leaders of Germany and Poland, told the Associated Press.

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

The project, he added, “couldn’t come at a better time”, referring to the renewed need that European countries, particularly in central Europe, feel to diversify sources of gas supply.

The exploitation of these 425 billion cubic metres of gas, five times what Germany consumed in 2019, will not solve Europe’s energy security problems, but it is a sign of the European will to decisively reduce dependence on Russian gas.

The problem, however, is getting African reserves to the homes of Europeans; there are already pipelines connecting Algeria, for example, to Europe, but building a similar structure from sub-Saharan Africa faces several complex challenges, not only of initial funding, but technical and security.

European leaders have made visits to countries such as Norway, Qatar and Azerbaijan, all gas producers, but also to North Africa, where Algeria has two pipelines with European destinations: Italy and Spain.

Italy has already signed an agreement with Angola, and in July signed another with Algeria, worth US$4 billion (about the same in euros), the month after Egypt agreed with the European Union and Israel to substantially increase sales of liquefied natural gas.

For Africa’s largest gas producer, Nigeria, the problem is not so much one of production as of distribution: “If you look at the reality on the ground, the truth is that although liquefied natural gas is the most lucrative form of exploitation, the problem of oil theft makes one question our ability to supply gas to Europe,” said Olufola Wusu, an analyst with an office in Lagos.

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The idea of exporting Nigeria’s gas to Europe via a nearly 4,400-kilometre pipeline has been stalled since 2009, mainly because of the need for an initial investment of around $13 billion, AP writes, noting that even if this issue is overcome, this trans-Saharan pipeline would face the same security risks that pipelines face in Nigeria.

Further south, and due to geographical proximity, Mozambique has adopted another strategy, which is to focus on exports to Asia, but European interest is also being noted in Maputo.

Mozambique is expected to become one of the largest exporters of gas when TotalEnergies’ $20 billion project comes on stream, opening the way for ExxonMobil to move ahead with its project.

For now, only Italy’s ENI is exploring the country’s huge northern reserves via a floating platform, the first in deep water in Africa, 80 kilometres from the coast, far from the violence that has plagued Cabo Delgado province for years, and is due to send the first ship to Europe later this month.

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