Europe looks for gas in Africa in the face of energy crisis with Ukraine War

European leaders are heading to African capitals, eager to find alternatives to Russian natural gas. This raises hopes among their colleagues in Africa that the War in Ukraine could change the continent’s unequal relationship with Europe, attracting a new wave of investment in gas, despite the pressure to migrate to renewable energy sources.

Poland’s president went to Senegal in September looking to do business with gas. German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz arrived in May looking for the same thing and told his country’s parliament that the energy crisis requires “that we work with countries where there is the possibility of developing gas fields”, while fulfilling promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The war has brought a complete turnaround,” says Mamadou Fall Kane, energy adviser to Senegal’s president. “The narrative has changed.” The flurry of expressions of interest from Europe is leading to new or accelerated energy projects, and there is talk of more to come.

The hope in African capitals is that European demand will lead to the financing of gas facilities not just for export but for domestic consumption. The issue assumes enormous importance in some parts of the continent.

Italian government ministers have accompanied executives from Eni, one of the world’s largest energy companies, to Algeria, Angola, the Republic of Congo and Mozambique, where a natural gas terminal operated by Eni is scheduled to start supplying gas to the Europe in question. of days. The company is now discussing with the Mozambican government the possibility of building an additional terminal.

In recent weeks, Congolese officials have embarked on an international marketing tour to attract US and European companies to the new oil and gas blocks they have put up for auction. Climate activists criticize the auction because it covers oil areas that coincide in part with a gorilla reserve, as well as areas of fragile peatlands that store huge volumes of carbon dioxide, one of those responsible for global warming.

African leaders interviewed lamented that it took a war thousands of miles away in Ukraine to give them bargaining power in energy deals, describing what they see as “double standards”. After all, for hundreds of years Europe used not just natural gas but much dirtier fuels like coal to fuel an era of industrialization and empire building.

The main argument of African leaders is that the least developed countries should be free to use more gas in the coming years, despite the climate crisis and the need for the world to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, because their citizens deserve a higher standard of living. and greater access to reliable sources of electricity and other basic services. But, they say, European and international lenders have made it too expensive.

European leaders often seem to preach to Africans about the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but offer little financial aid to help them create green energy alternatives. At the same time, Europe continues to produce far greater emissions than Africa.

“Just two or three months ago, the same Europeans who were preaching to us saying ‘no to gas’ came to say they now want a middle ground,” says Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union’s energy and infrastructure commissioner. “We’re trying to survive. But instead we’re being infantilized.”

A recent political cartoon by Tanzanian artist Gado, shared on social media, captured this frustration after a speech by US climate envoy John Kerry at an environmental conference in Senegal.

The cartoon paraphrases Kerry’s speech, which is in front of a podium. His speech reflects the “moral lesson” that many African leaders feel they are hearing from their Western counterparts. “Guess what, folks,” he says, smiling beside American flags waving in the wind. “Mother Nature doesn’t measure where emissions come from. We are all responsible for that.”

As he speaks, clouds of pollution escape his mouth.

In his speech, Kerry did mention Africa’s relatively minuscule contribution to global emissions and the world’s common interest in combating climate change. He has said that African countries have the right to use fossil fuels to develop their economies.

The argument of some African leaders is that natural gas, cheaper and cleaner than oil and coal, should serve as a transition fuel for the continent while the transition to renewable sources such as wind and solar energy is made, as has been made in Europe.

In an interview he gave shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kerry said the atmosphere will be able to handle some new fossil fuel plants in developed countries as long as the world’s 20 largest economies, which produce 80% of global emissions, are leaving the dirty energy behind.

Western governments have sought to promote the growth of renewable energy in less developed countries through a so-called just transition, in which they bear part of the costs of new projects. Last year, the United States, Britain, Germany, France and the European Union pledged $8.5 billion in aid and loans to help South Africa switch from coal to clean energy sources.

It was a big cash injection for renewable energy on the continent. But it was a rare instance. Overall, Western investment in renewables in African countries has been even more sparse than their investments in fossil fuel projects.

Energy poverty on the continent stifles the growth of industries that create jobs and sustain economies. More than 600 million Africans do not have access to electricity and nearly 1 billion cook and heat their homes with firewood and charcoal, fuels that cause severe respiratory problems and deaths.

Bringing electricity to every African home could be done by 2030 with investments of just $25 billion a year, according to the International Energy Agency — a fraction of what is invested in global energy today.

Experts say Western concern about African countries’ desire to burn more gas at home in the coming years is misplaced from a climate change perspective. The agency projected this year that if African countries develop all of their known gas reserves, the continent’s contribution to global emissions will rise from just 3% today to an estimated 3.5%.

Aside from the continent’s biggest emitters – South Africa, which is dependent on coal, and the countries in North Africa that are substantial producers of oil and gas – the 47 other African countries combined emit even less than some of the smaller European economies, like Greece. With Western investment in gas on the rise again, these disparities are likely to persist.

Just this month, the UK announced the issuance of up to 100 new permits to drill for gas, despite studies by its own government indicating that the best way to reduce energy costs in the long term is to move away from fossil fuels.

In August, US President Joe Biden announced that he would resume leasing federal land for oil and gas exploration. And in July, the G7, the club of the largest industrialized democracies, watered down a pledge to stop funding fossil fuel projects, saying the war created “exceptional circumstances”.

Lender organizations like the African Development Bank have been investing in gas for years, but without money coming in from Europe, projects could take decades to start.

Gas prices in Europe have been falling because the continent’s biggest economies have managed to replace most of the gas they bought from Russia with gas imported from Norway, North Africa and the US. Experts predict that, in the coming years, much of Europe’s gas demand will be met by these countries and also by Qatar, which is expected to open the world’s largest gas facility in 2025.

Even with the flurry of visits by European leaders to Africa, some of the projects and proposals for the region came with important obstacles.

Italy’s Eni, owned in part by the state, bought a floating natural gas platform off the Congo for more than half a billion dollars. Company executives and government representatives who have visited since the start of the war have started to accelerate the project so that it can produce gas as early as 2023. By 2024 the company also plans to double its imports from Algeria, which is already connected to Italy by a trans-Mediterranean gas pipeline.

Eni executives discuss the possibility of a second floating terminal in Mozambique, despite an Islamic insurgency in the north of the country that continues to threaten a major land-based energy project in the region. Offshore platforms generally produce less gas but can be assembled in less time.

“The war has brought a new urgency,” said an Eni spokesman who declined to be named, citing company policy. “It accelerated a process of adopting new gas sources that had been in the works for years.”

According to the Senegalese energy adviser, the German prime minister’s visit to Senegal has not yet resulted in a concrete deal. The Senegalese government has been working with BP and US company Kosmos Energy to develop an offshore gas field that is expected to come into production in 2023, according to Kosmos.

The ripple effects of the war also led to renewed discussions over a long-dormant trans-Saharan gas pipeline project that would supply Europe with gas from Nigeria via Niger, another country that was part of the German prime minister’s itinerary – and which it is also fighting a growing Islamic insurgency.