Energy transition: African energy bank will fund oil, gas projects — APPO

Amidst global calls for the transition to cleaner energy and massive divestment in fossil fuels projects, the Secretary-General, African Petroleum Producers Organization (APPO), Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim, said creating the African Energy Bank (AEB) would provide funds for oil and gas projects.

This was even as it disclosed that Nigeria is one of the five countries that have expressed interest in hosting the Headquarters of the AEB.

He stated this while giving his keynote address at the 16th Nigerian Association for Energy Economics/International Association for Energy Economics with the theme: Energy Evolution, Transition and Reform: Prospects for African Economies held in Abuja on Monday.

According to him, International Oil Companies (IOCs) are wary of investing in Africa, “not because they do not believe that it makes economic sense to do so, or that they honestly believe that they owe humanity a duty to protect the planet earth, but rather because they are afraid of the consequences of their actions from their home governments, their shareholders and the powerful climate lobby.”

He said the current dilemma African countries found themselves in, was due to what he described as “fallacies” stressing the need for African governments to merge resources with the sole aim of raising the needed funds to operate the oil and gas industry.

Prior to this, he said although climate change poses an existential threat to the world, measures and policies introduced to check climate change should not be uniformly imposed on all societies without regard to their special circumstances, like their levels of socio-economic development and energy poverty.

In his explanation, he posited that today’s climate activism is driven more by the quest for energy security by developed countries rather than concerns about the environment.

“A very good demonstration of this reality is the response of today’s champions of energy transition to the use of fossil fuels in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“The very people that announced an end to funding oil and gas projects, especially in Africa, ostensibly because they are considered dirty fuels and dangerous to humanity, sent high-powered delegations to our countries offering to fund oil and gas projects that for decades were begging for investors. Of course, the condition was that the oil and gas should go to the investors.

“In other words, Africa is encouraged to produce oil and gas only if they are meant for export to developed countries to ameliorate their special circumstances due to the war, but the production of that same oil and gas is dangerous to humanity if it is meant to be burnt in Africa,” he added.

He argued that oil and gas are harmful today because they are foreign controlled noting that countries that have used fossil fuels to grow their economies have largely succeeded in moving their economies from relying on industrial manufacturing for their wealth creation, to reliance on services.

Earlier, the President, Nigerian Association for Energy Economics, Prof. Yinka Omorogbe in her welcome address, said energy transition is a significant change, aimed at rectifying past damages to the environment.

However, she said Nigeria has no alternative to transition as it lacks adequate energy to power the industrial evolution needed to put the country on the path of true economic and sustainable development.

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