The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) has said that efforts are on the way to prepare its members for the decarbonisation of the African petroleum industry in the face of threats posed by the global campaign for energy transition.
The group declared that decarbonisation of fossil fuels had become necessary to spur the development of the continent with available and affordable energy.
It also lamented the massive resource wastage in Nigeria’s petroleum industry, where it noted that poor infrastructure and low industrial capacity enabled the utilisation of very small fraction of produced gas.
The petroleum engineers also lamented the massive drift of Africa’s skilled labour from the continent, warning that mass emigration of youths was creating deep skills shortfalls in building local capacity for domestic industrial development.
The Africa Regional Director of SPE, Riverson Oppong, who was in Nigeria, stated that demand for oil and gas across the globe had made it crucial that technology be deployed in addressing carbon footprints of the industry, adding that the net-zero mantra in the global climate campaign currently indicated a shift of focus from energy transition to energy transformation.
Riverson, who featured at the debut edition of Oilda Fireside Chat platform hosted in Lagos, explained that the campaign for energy transition was shifting focus from demand migration from fossil fuels to decarbonisation of the industry.
The Oilda Fireside Chat is an executive media platform that provides opportunities for industry leaders to share experiences and perspectives on crucial issues in the emerging energy landscape.
Oppong underscored the impact of Geopolitics on Africa, adding that the campaign for energy transition was pushing production pressure in the continent as African governments hastened the derivation of full economic benefits from their petroleum resources.
The situation, according to him, challenges professionals in the industry to evolve technologies and practices that align with the demands for decarbonization.
Oppong, who hails from Ghana, said his country was pursuing its clean energy programmes as a matter of cost efficiency, stressing that the petroleum industry in Ghana was conceived not to waste even a molecule of gas.
While regretting the massive waste of gas resources in Nigeria and other places on the continent, Oppong called on African governments to accelerate industrialisation of their economies to create useful utilisation for the continent’s vast natural gas resources. He noted that petroleum remained the most available energy to drive the industrial development of the continent.
