Your Excellencies Ambassadors and Heads of Diplomatic Missions of the Africa Petroleum Producers’ Organization, APPO, Member Countries based in Brazzaville, representatives of the Ministers of Hydrocarbons and Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Congo, Chief of Staff to the Minister of Hydrocarbons of the Republic of Congo, the Member of the APPO Executive Board for the Republic of Congo, Heads of international institutions, my colleagues from the APPO Secretariat, gentlemen and ladies of the press, ladies and gentlemen.
We are most honoured with your esteemed presence at the maiden edition of the APPO Member Countries’ Ambassadors and Heads of Mission Forum, organized by the APPO Secretariat here in Brazzaville, the Headquarters of APPO.
Thank you for creating the time to be here with us this evening and thank you for your anticipated support, guidance and direction to our continental energy Organization.
Your Excellencies, this forum should have been created a long time ago.
As representatives of your sovereigns in Brazzaville, the Headquarters of APPO, the intergovernmental energy Organization that your governments collectively own, we believe that it is proper for Your Excellencies to be fully informed about what your Organization is doing.
We believe that it is proper for us to inform you and seek guidance from you on the best ways to handle the complexity of international energy politics, especially in this era of global energy transition.
As Your Excellencies may be aware the global paradigm shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energies, which is euphemistically called energy transition, poses a grave threat to the national economies and social development of oil and gas producing and dependent countries, to which most of our countries belong.
Most of our governments today rely heavily on fossil fuel export revenue to meet the obligations of governance.
Our governments rely heavily on fossil fuel export revenue to provide security, education, health care, workers’ salaries and many other necessities of life for the population.
Over time, fossil fuel production came to displace many other forms of economic production.
Excellencies, lest we are misunderstood. APPO is not contesting the science of climate change.
Neither are we against energy transition.
However, we want the champions of energy transition to acknowledge the fact that fossil fuel induced climate change did not start in the last 50 years.
It started since the world began to use coal, and it began to accelerate with the introduction of the use of oil and gas nearly 200 years ago.
What we are saying is that today’s climate challenges are the products of primarily Western industrial revolution and its intensive use of fossil fuels, and also the past and current lifestyle of the people of the developed countries of the World.
Some statistics will help shed more light on what we are saying.
The global per capita energy consumption in 2021 was 72 Million BTU.
But when this per capita consumption is broken into regions of the world, we find that the per capita energy consumption in the USA is 293 Million BTU, which is more than 4 times the world average.
If we take Europe, their average was 105 Million BTU, which is 1.5 times the world average.
For Africa, our per capita energy consumption is only 15 Million BTU, which is about one fifth of the world average, one-seventh of the European average and about one twentieth the USA average.
And this figure 15 Million BTU is unevenly spread on the African continent.
If we are to look at Sub-Saharan Africa alone, the per capita energy consumption is an abysmal 10 Million BTU or about 3 percent of that of the USA, 10 per cent of that of Europe, and about 14 per cent of the global average. Yet, we are being told that we should abandon fossil fuels.
The second point we want the champions of energy transition to acknowledge is that they were aware of the dangers of burning fossil fuels to the atmosphere as far back as 1859 and 1896 when their own climate scientist, John Tyndall a Scot, and Svante Arrhenius, a Swiss, respectively, published studies to prove that burning fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases which deplete the ozone layer.
But because these countries were determined to consolidate their industrial revolution, improve their transportation and health systems, better the living standards of their people, they carefully hid the findings of the studies from the world.
And now that other countries, especially in Africa, are on the verge of industrial revolution, and would require a lot of energy, which at the moment, can best be provided by fossil fuels, we are being told that fossil fuels are dangerous for humanity.
It is interesting to note that these developed countries have moved their economies from reliance on heavy industries and intensive energy production activities to the manufacture of knowledge, artificial intelligence and service delivery economies.
These forms of economic activities are not energy intensive unlike manufacturing, which our countries are now set to do.
Having made these two points, I think it is important I re-emphasize that APPO is not against energy transition, nor are we against any fair, just and equitable policy or measure introduced to safeguard the atmosphere from harmful emissions and by implication to make life better for humankind.
Our position is that 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.
To say that the global climate challenge is a universal challenge that requires the full commitment, contribution and sacrifice of all and sundry is implicitly saying that we are all equally responsible for the mess that has been created by the few.
But that is not true. Those responsible for creating the mess should take full responsibility for cleaning the mess.
There is a school of thought that believes that if the earth’s atmosphere is a collective heritage of all the inhabitants of this earth, then any group that selfishly destroys it should be made to make reparations to the other victims of its destructive activities.
And this is especially so where it can be established that the destruction of the common patrimony gave them advantage over other owners of the common patrimony.
Excellencies, with the advent of energy transition, energy discourse has now become a realm of international politics. It is no more energy and commerce.
And this is where we in APPO, whose expertise lie in exploration, drilling, refining and marketing of oil and gas, believe that we can look up to you for guidance on how to diplomatically articulate and deliver our messages to get the required result in the international community.
We believe that you need to understand our position for you to be able to assist us articulate it.
You need to understand our position for you to be able to advise us on how best to articulate it on the international scene.
While acknowledging that energy transition poses a serious threat to our national economies, I should also like to assure Your Excellencies that we are not sitting idly by for our economies to be destroyed by policies taken outside our borders.
A major study conducted by APPO on the Future of the Oil and Gas Industry in Africa in the Light of the Energy Transition identified three imminent threats. These are finance, technology and market.
The study established that in the nearly 100 years that a number of African countries have been producing oil and gas, they have continued to rely heavily on foreign finance to explore and produce oil and gas.
Equally, they have relied on Western technology and expertise.
And finally, they have relied heavily on foreign markets.
That explains why the oil and gas pipelines in Africa run from the oil and gas fields to the coast to be exported outside Africa, even when Africa has the largest proportion of its population living in energy poverty.
Six hundred million Africans live without access to electricity.
Nine hundred million live without access to any form of modern energy for cooking or domestic heating.
Yet, we export 75% of our crude oil and 45% of our gas outside Africa.
Now that the foreign markets are closing on us, the finance is being withdrawn, and the technology is not being developed, are we going to declare the over 120 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserve and over 550 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves as wasted assets?
Certainly not with the hundreds of millions of our people living in energy poverty and also when we are on the verge of industrialization.
To prepare for the challenges ahead, APPO has partnered with the Afreximbank to found the Africa Energy Bank (AEB).
Negotiations have reached advanced stage and we expect to establish the bank by the end of the first half of this year.
Indeed, some Member Countries have already started paying their subscriptions.
When established the AEB shall provide funding for energy projects on the continent.
On technology, a team from the APPO Secretariat visited oil and gas research, development and training institutions in our Member Countries in the second half of last year to assess what they have on the ground with a view to identifying some of these institutions to be upgraded to regional centres of oil and gas excellence.
And on creating market for our oil and gas, we are confident that with 1.4 billion people, more than half of who have no access to energy, Africa has the potential market. All we need to do is to empower the people to have access to energy and we shall be surprised at the speed and also the level of social and economic development that will take place in Africa.
In this respect, it might interest Your Excellencies to know that APPO is partnering with the Central Africa Business Energy Forum, CABEF, on the Central Africa Pipeline System Project.
This project shall create the necessary energy infrastructure to move energy from areas of plenty to areas of need in the Central Africa sub-region. Eleven countries in this sub-region are going to be linked by oil, gas and product pipelines.
Excellencies, since this is our maiden meeting, I should be careful not to bore you and discourage you from coming when next we call.
I would like to once again thank you for creating the time to come here this evening. Together, we shall change the narrative about Africa.
I thank you all for your kind attention.
