The African Petroleum Producers Organization, APPO, took an active part in the 5th edition of Egypt Petroleum Show, EGYPS 2022 held in Cairo from 14 to 16 February 2022.
Alongside several leaders of the African energy sector, representatives of international energy organizations and the international press, the Secretary General of APPO, H.E. Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim has carried the voice of the Organization, and hence of African oil producing countries on the thorny issue of Energy Transition.
In the era of Energy Transition and Net Zero Emission ambitions, the need for all forms of energy, including liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, remains relevant. As the global pandemic has accelerated the evolution of climate change actions, governments, industry organizations and think tanks around the world are evolving historic policies and frameworks that will enable futuristic cross-sector collaboration and create a pragmatic pathway for industry.
For Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim, “we in Africa are not denying the dangers of climate change and are not against the Energy Transition. But what we are saying is that Africa cannot be forced to take the fast track of energy transition as demanded by the Western world. We can do with all forms of energy. We are not going to abandon fossil fuels for renewable energy when we are blessed with abundant fossil fuels and the infrastructure to produce them.”
At a session titled “Modernizing the Global Energy Dialogue for Industry Transformation,” the organizers of EGYPS2022 intended to highlight the importance of industry being part of the solution to climate change and energy transition.
At the same time, the session addressed the issue of mitigating future energy crises and fluctuating market prices due to the changing global situation.
And the APPO Secretary General recalled that developed countries are now demonizing fossil fuels as an energy source, telling the world that fossil fuels are not good for the atmosphere. The campaign against fossil fuels is becoming increasingly virulent. The impression they give is that this knowledge of the harmful effects of fossil fuels on the atmosphere has just been discovered. This is not the case, he argued. Scientists discovered that the use of fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases as early as the 19th century,
But because today’s developed countries needed huge amounts of energy for their industrialization and economic growth, and they realized that only fossil fuels could guarantee them the quantity and quality of energy they needed, these people suppressed these discoveries. And the world continued to use fossil fuels until today’s developed countries managed to transform their economies from reliance on industrial mass production to reliance on knowledge production and artificial intelligence, which do not require as much energy. Bilateral meetings and other exchanges with companies in the Egyptian oil sector and other countries present at the event were also on the agenda of the Secretary General. The same was true of the media with whom the exchanges focused on the issue of energy transition, the functioning of the APPO and other topics of interest to the African energy sector.
