The global energy market has been upended after the European Union (EU) took the decisive step to wean itself off Russian gas, oil and coal. The July decision by the EU to define natural gas and nuclear power as “green” or “sustainable” sources of energy further lifted African leaders’ spirits as they could finally attract funding for their big projects.

The decisions made at COP26 to curb methane emissions and keep coal and gas in the ground have been dumped by the wayside. Nobody seems to care any more. However, is the scramble for African energy really going to improve lives in Africa in any significant way? 

Europe scrambles to find alternative energy sources

Russia ships about 155 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to the EU every year, of which just over 15bcm are liquefied natural gas (LNG). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this relationship has all but collapsed, forcing EU nations to identify alternative sources of energy.

The US and a partnership of countries have agreed to send 15bcm of LNG to Europe in 2022. From 2023, the US and partners will ship upwards of 50bcm of LNG to the EU. With this partnership, the US will more than double the 22bcm of LNG that it exports to the EU annually.

It is still not clear, however, if the US can more than double its LNG exports to Europe within 12 months. Where is the capacity going to come from? What this points to, at least in the short term, is that US producers are going to double prices and kick out buyers who cannot match what European buyers are paying.

Be that as it may, this partnership still leaves a gaping hole that the EU needs to fill. Droughts and floods have further constrained the energy supply in Europe and all signs point to a difficult winter ahead. The challenges are not necessarily going to go away in 2023 either.

France’s nuclear fleet has not been operating at optimum capacity due to drought conditions, and scorching weather has reduced the supplies of water required to remove and dump surplus heat from steam circuits. France is currently exploring a short-term deal to supply Germany with electricity in exchange for gas during the winter months.

Germany, which used to import around 50bcm of gas from Russia annually, most of it through the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, is scrambling to diversify its energy sources and storage facilities. It has embarked on the construction of massive LNG gas terminals at Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel (near Bremen) and Lubmin and Stade (near Hamburg). Another terminal will be built by private investors in Lubmin. Each one of the terminals will handle at least 5bcm of gas per year.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised his nation this month that the LNG terminals would be ready by the end of 2023. When energy EU ministers met on 9 September to find solutions to the volatile energy markets, economy minister Robert Habeck told journalists that Germany could already do without Russian gas.

In mid-September, EU energy ministers met to rein in volatility in energy markets. They mooted a number of solutions, including energy conservation at peak times (between 7pm and 10pm), solidarity contributions from fossil companies that are making record profits right now, the decoupling of gas from electricity markets and capping the price of gas, although this last suggestion was rejected by Hungary.

All this shows that Europe’s energy markets are going to remain out of control for a while and African leaders are seeing this as an opportunity to be leveraged.

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African leaders eyeing gas markets in Europe

While Europe scrambles for energy, it has been raining cash in Africa — but not necessarily for ordinary Africans. The following countries, among others, have already received funding in excess of $150-billion for gas projects: Mozambique, Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Egypt, Gabon, South Sudan, Algeria, Angola, Ghana, Tanzania, Morocco, South Africa, Libya, Tunisia, Congo Republic, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Many more countries are developing oil and gas projects on a smaller scale, including Rwanda, Uganda, Mauritania, Somalia and Malawi. Altogether, Africa has already received hard cash as well as promises totalling at least half a trillion dollars for gas projects. 

In July, Algeria, which already supplies Italy with 20bcm of gas, agreed to increase its production by up to 9bcm from 2023 when outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi visited the country. However, a recent audit by Sonatrach shows that Algeria can only deliver an extra 4bcm to Italy, and this requires using all available resources of the Transmed gas pipeline. Capacity may not necessarily be an issue in the long term because French President Emmanuel Macron visited Algeria in August and signed deals to invest in the gas sector.

Morocco, which is always squabbling with Algeria, and receives a bit of gas in exchange for letting Algeria ship gas to Spain through its territory, has made significant gas finds of its own through Chariot Limited and Predator Oil & Gas Holdings. Chariot recently announced that recoverable capacity in the Anchois project has increased to four trillion cubic feet (Tcf) and that it already has the credit to invest in the project.

Senegal is set to extract 2.5 million tonnes of gas from its Greater Tortue Ahmeyim gas field in 2023. That number is not big enough for Germany which has, through Chancellor Olaf Scholz, offered Senegal financial support to ramp up its production capacity to at least 10 million tonnes per annum.

On 16 September, Nigeria, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and Morocco launched the $25-billion Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project (NMGP). The 5,600km project is expected to run through Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco before finally landing in Europe. It will supply three billion cubic feet of gas per day with the possibility of going even higher with more investments.

Nigeria and Morocco do not have the cash to fund the project yet, but the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has stepped in to fund the feasibility study. If results are positive, it will spearhead the search for investors.

Mozambique already has a lot of cash invested. In fact, were it not for Islamic insurgents, Total would be shipping LNG every day. Activities have been halted for more than three years due to safety concerns in Cabo Delgado province. In early September, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi called on Total to urgently resume work at the $20-billion Afungi Peninsula in Cabo Delgado. According to Fredson Guilengue, project manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southern Africa, the Mozambican government and many ordinary citizens see the project as a way to get money for urgent national development priorities, which have been made even more urgent by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Neighbouring South Africa, which consumes 179,153 million cubic feet of gas per year, also wants to become a major player in the gas sector. Recent finds show that the country has about 60Tcf of gas offshore, a lot of it in Block 11B/12Bn the Outeniqua Basin (Luiperd and Brulpadda).

South Africa also has 390Tcf of shale gas in the Karoo Basin, according to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. However, the late Professor Bob Scholes of Wits University’s Global Change Institute placed recoverable gas there at a modest 20Tcf, ie, “… about 40 times smaller than the known remaining coal reserves in South Africa”.

South Africa has awarded 20-year independent power producer procurement deals to local subsidiaries of the Turkish Karadeniz Karpowership group, which produces electricity from LNG on floating ships. The deals, worth more than R220-billion are currently on hold due to challenges by environmental activists, something that Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe is not very happy about.

Currently, most of the gas used in South Africa comes from Mozambique (Pande-Temane) and the belief is that South Africa can become self-sufficient if operations get under way in areas known to have recoverable deposits.

Both Shell and Total have made significant finds of oil and gas further up north, in Namibia. The Shell find, especially, is significant, holding between 250 to 300 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent.

Green colonialism with echoes of past asymmetric relationships

Three things can be said about the current rush for African gas. 

First, all the talk of keeping gas, oil and coal in the ground pre- and post-COP26 has all but disappeared. After COP26, African leaders kicked up a fuss after UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and others led a charge to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

In May, the current president of the African Union, Macky Sall, said: “Africa must be able to exploit its large gas reserves for another 20 or 30 years to further its development and provide access to electricity to the 600 million people who are still deprived. It would be unfair to stop us.”

In August, Mantashe issued a series of tweets saying: “We need to explore & exploit the minerals that our country is endowed with to grow our economy… It is comforting to see that there is consensus that gas & nuclear form part of the green technologies in the Just Energy Transition. We must be systematic in our approach & appreciate that the upstream petroleum & fishing industries can coexist.”

Nigeria and Egypt’s energy ministers have also railed against what they see as colonialist bullying behaviour by the Global North. They are determined to “pollute now, clean up later”, just like others did. Unless large sums of cash come to them from other sources, of course.

To the second point. The major projects that are being developed in Africa are specifically geared toward the export market. They are not going to make a significant dent in energy poverty in Africa. There is very little infrastructure being developed to serve the needs of the local market, except possibly in South Africa and the Ecowas market.

This green colonialism is only going to further exacerbate ecocide and poverty in communities where these projects are housed. Total’s investments in Mozambique, for example, are worth $20-billion, bigger than Mozambique’s entire GDP, which stands at $14.2-billion. All the gas in Mozambique will go to South Africa, Europe and elsewhere through auctions in gas markets.

The third point is that the thirst for gas is fuelling green grabbing (seizing land and assets with or without compensation for so-called green projects) on a massive scale.

Part of Senegal’s oil and gas fields lie directly on Sangomar Island in the Saloum Delta, a Unesco World Heritage area. According to Senegalese climate expert Ibrahima Thiam, communities whose access to these areas was restricted by government edicts stand to lose even more fishing areas to the gas projects, which will certainly fuel migration to Ceuta (Spain) and Ecowas countries.

Guilengue says that communities in Cabo Delgado have already lost land, sea and forest resources that the government or Total will never replace. To compound their problems, Total’s investment has attracted Islamic insurgents to the area and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Mozambique, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and even France have brought in soldiers from Rwanda and SADC to beat back the insurgents. However, local communities are abandoned to their fate, in poverty and landlessness.       

In Cameroon, communities in former West Cameroon territories have been at war for two years after officials, all from the former French part of the territory, were brought in to manage oil and gas assets, leaving them with nothing by way of local development. These territories see Macron’s visit as direct support for France’s usurpation of their resources. West Cameroon is an epitome of gas projects around Africa where national governments go into local communities and set up pipelines to extract billions of dollars worth of gas without building a single road or hospital in the area.

In conclusion

The major European economies’ investments in Africa following the changes in their energy markets show scant regard for environmental concerns. Progress made towards switching from anthropocentric to more ecocentric ways of living has been rolled back in a matter of months, highlighting hypocrisy and a pattern of colonial North-South relationships.

Sometimes, the colonial attitudes also come from new sources like China and India, which have been plundering Africa for cobalt and rare-earth minerals. Egypt plans to announce to world leaders at COP27 that African countries should be allowed to exploit their gas and nuclear capacities for national development objectives.

The reality is that the communities that house all these projects always suffer. They lose land, they lose sea resources and they see lots of machines and equipment come into their communities and change their way of life forever while all the money flows to capital cities.

That is not to say that Africa cannot work with the Global North. Collaborations are possible. However, such collaborations must be ecocentric and they must be based on principles of deep democracy from below within a new internationalism. DM