Connect with us

Business

A Closer Look at Africa’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Industry: Established Players and Promising New Projects (By NJ Ayuk)

Published

on

The African Energy Chamber (AEC) has outlined our expectations for Africa’s gas sector in the “The State of African Energy Q1 2023 Report”

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 30, 2023/APO Group/ — 

By NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman, African Energy Chamber (www.EnergyChamber.org)

Africa may not possess the vast conventional gas resources of the Middle East or Russia, and it may not be able to match the combined conventional and unconventional resources of North America. But it does have a sizeable amount of gas – at least 620 trillion cubic feet (tcf) — 17.56 trillion cubic meters (tcm) — in proven reserves.

That’s more than enough to make Africa a key player in the global gas industry. In fact, it puts Africa in a position to influence the course of the industry, especially in light of long-term trends, including the shift to more flexible contract and delivery terms, along with more recent developments such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The African Energy Chamber (AEC) has outlined our expectations for Africa’s gas sector in the “The State of African Energy Q1 2023 Report”, a new publication available for download on our website. The report covers our outlook on both upstream and downstream trends. Here, I’d like to offer some extra insight into our take on downstream developments – that is, on African liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, including the countries currently dominating the industry and those preparing to make their presence known.

African Gas Takes the Stage

First, some background.

I’ve already noted that Africa has significant gas reserves. And prior to last year, those reserves had already drawn a significant amount of attention from international oil companies (IOCs) and other entities involved in the global gas trade. Indeed, they hadn’t just attracted attention; they’d also attracted many billions of dollars in investment commitments from firms seeking access to large undeveloped gas deposits. IOCs were especially keen to enter offshore frontier provinces such as the Ruvuma basin, located off the coast of Mozambique, and the Senegal-Mauritania section of the MSGBC basin, located off the continent’s western coast.

These companies were interested in Africa not just because they wanted to add new assets to their portfolios. They also wanted to maximize their ability to serve customers seeking gas on flexible terms. This was in line with the long-term shift toward greater flexibility in the gas sector, which is shedding its previous reliance on overland pipeline deliveries and long-term, large-scale contracts with pricing formulae linked to crude oil.

That is, IOCs wanted African gas precisely because they saw it as an additional means of supporting alternative supply arrangements involving spot market purchases and tanker shipments of LNG. But they shifted from wanting African gas to needing it in late February of 2022, when conflict broke out between Russia and Ukraine. I continue to see this as a major topic requested by many to be on the agenda at African Energy Week taking place in Cape Town on October 16th to 20th.

African Gas Enters the Spotlight

This event – the Russian invasion of Ukraine – turned out to be a tipping point for Africa’s gas sector.

The conflict sent global energy markets into a frenzy. This was partly because it led the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union to introduce embargoes on Russian crude oil supplies and partly because it sparked concerns about possible interruptions in Russian gas deliveries to Europe via pipeline. (These concerns appeared to be valid, as Russian gas shipments to Europe became irregular last year despite the lack of a formal embargo such as the one imposed on oil.)

IOCs wanted African gas precisely because they saw it as an additional means of supporting alternative supply arrangements

The conflict also led the EU to step up its long-standing campaign to reduce dependence on Russian gas. Russia has long been the largest outside supplier of gas to the European market, and up until the end of 2021, it was the source of at least a third of all volumes consumed within the EU. Uncertainty over these supplies heightened European interest in alternative supply sources — and a significant portion of that interest settled on Africa.

As a result, some IOCs and EU member states began pursuing deals with North African states that were already in a position to export gas to Southern Europe via pipeline. The Italian energy major Eni, for example, signed a deal with Libya’s National Oil Corp. (NOC) in January 2023 with the intent of investing USD8 billion in a gas project that could export its output via the Greenstream pipeline. Eni has also added a number of gas-producing assets in Algeria, which has pipeline connections to both Italy and Spain, to its portfolio over the last year.

However, some IOCs and EU states have focused on LNG-oriented endeavors that are in line with the growing flexibility of the global gas market. Italy is certainly set to benefit from Eni’s efforts on this front; over the last year, the company has arranged to import more LNG from two existing suppliers, Algeria and Angola, while also launching LNG exports from the Coral field offshore Mozambique and striking a deal with the Republic of Congo (ROC) on its floating LNG (FLNG) project for the Marine XII fields.

Eni is hardly alone. For example, the British giant BP said earlier this year that it anticipated making a final investment decision (FID) on the Yakaar-Teranga LNG project, which focuses on a group of fields off the coast of Senegal, before the end of 2023. Meanwhile, Shell (UK) and Equinor (Norway) revealed in mid-May that they had finished negotiations on the USD42billion Tanzania LNG project and expected to sign a host government agreement (HGA) and production-sharing agreement (PSA) within the next few weeks.

And there are plenty of other examples! Altogether, there have been enough new investment pledges made that Africa is now on track to see its total LNG export capacity rise from the current level of 80 million tonnes per year to around 110 million tons per year by 2030 and to more than 175 million tonnes per year by 2040.

Africa’s slowly expanding cast of LNG players

But as the AEC explains in The State of African Energy Q1 2023 Report,” these commitments are not going to change the picture for African LNG immediately. For the time being, the continent’s LNG business will continue to be dominated by the most established players: Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria (and to a lesser extent, Equatorial Guinea and Angola).

Algeria and Egypt, our report notes, likely will maintain their existing LNG infrastructure capacity of about 29 million tonnes per year and 12.7 million tonnes per year respectively.

Nigeria, meanwhile, will increase its LNG infrastructure capacity from 22 million tonnes per annum (MMtpa) to 30 MMtpa when it completes the Nigeria LNG (NLNG) Train 7 development, our report states. The project by Nigeria LNG — a venture comprising the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Shell, TotalEnergies, and Eni — calls for the construction of an additional LNG train and a liquefaction unit for Nigeria’s six-train Bonny plant.

Train 7, which was about 32% complete in late 2022, is intended to meet local needs while increasing Nigerian LNG exports, diversifying Nigeria’s revenue portfolio, and helping the country better capitalize on its 200 tcf of natural gas reserves.

Nigerian maritime logistics company UTM Offshore, meanwhile, likely will nudge up Nigeria’s capacity to just over 31 MMtpa when it completes the FLING project I mentioned above. As of last November, the FLNG was expected to start operating in 2027.

True, BP is due to begin first-phase production at Grand Tortue/Ahmeyim (GTA) block in late 2023, and Eni and its partners are set to expand LNG production at the Coral field offshore Mozambique. Indeed, the AEC expects these projects to help push African LNG exports up to the equivalent of 66 billion cubic meters this year, up 5% on 2022.

However, it’s going to take time to bring the rest of the new projects on stream and to build all these new onshore and offshore LNG plants. Tanzania LNG, for example, is not expected to begin production until 2028, and Eni’s Marine XII project will not reach its full capacity of 3 million tonnes per year until late 2025. TotalEnergies of France is not likely to begin commercial operations on the Mozambique LNG project before 2025, and the U.S. giant ExxonMobil will need even more time to launch its Rovuma LNG project in Mozambique, since it has yet to reach the FID stage.

This means that Algeria, Egypt, and Nigeria will continue to account for the majority of the LNG coming out of Africa for the next few years — and that the balance won’t really start to shift until the end of the decade. IOCs and EU states are currently laying the groundwork for expanding production and opening up new basins to support LNG projects, but it will take a few years for their efforts to pay off.

For more insights on LNG projects and other developments in the African gas sector, read our “The State of African Energy Q1 2023 Report.” It is available for download at www.EnergyChamber.org.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

Business

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres Accelerates AI Ambitions, Achieves Certification under NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center Program

Published

on

ST Telemedia Global

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 13 March 2025 – ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), one of the world’s fastest-growing data centre colocation service providers headquartered in Singapore, today announced it is now an NVIDIA colocation partner. Two of its data centre facilities in Southeast Asia (SEA) – STT Singapore 6, and STT Bangkok 1 – have achieved certification in the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center programme. These are the first facilities in STT GDC’s portfolio to achieve this certification.

The NVIDIA DGX platform is purpose-built for enterprise AI, powering AI workloads spanning analytics, training, and inference. It offers advanced compute density, performance and scale with a single, unified system that can power the complete enterprise AI lifecycle. The NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center certification enables STT GDC to offer our customers access to world-class, state-of-the-art data centre facilities to run their most important AI workloads.

STT GDC is among the first Singapore-headquartered companies to achieve this certification, recognising its continued focus on supporting the global growth ambitions of businesses as they transition from the digital era to the intelligent era. This is driven by accelerated computing, a key driver of AI innovation, and by STT GDC’s ability to support advanced AI capabilities and next-generation infrastructure, such as NVIDIA DGX GB200 systems. STT GDC’s AI-ready data centres are designed to accommodate the thermal demands of such cutting-edge technology, with support for both immersion cooling and direct-to-chip cooling technologies.

“The DGX-Ready Data Center certification helps ensure that our customers have access to the robust infrastructure and expertise required to deploy and scale high-performance AI workloads. Achieving this certification underscores our commitment to supporting the rapid growth of AI adoption across industries, helping our customers focus on innovation, accelerate their AI initiatives with confidence and achieve a quicker time-to-value for their AI investments,” said Daniel Pointon, Group Chief Technology Officer, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres.

“As organizations embrace AI to enhance customer experiences and drive better business outcomes, robust environments that are optimized for AI infrastructure become critical,” said Tony Paikeday, senior director of AI systems at NVIDIA. “STT GDC’s achievement of the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center certification empowers enterprises in Southeast Asia to simplify their AI initiatives with optimized, high-performance infrastructure and facilities that enable the delivery of data-fueled insights sooner.”

AI continues to transform industries globally, driving innovation in everything from predictive analytics to autonomous systems. Worldwide spending on AI is expected to more than double by 2028, reaching US$632 billion[1]. AI has the potential to fundamentally disrupt global markets by innovating new business models and offerings. Strategic investments in AI will be necessary to enable businesses to both unlock competitive advantage and maximise the full potential of AI.

Continue Reading

Business

Tima Networks to Create $100M Fund with African Energy Chamber (AEC)

Published

on

African Energy Chamber

MoUs were signed with Tima Networks and Yunan County Chuangxing Industrial Investment Group

SHANGHAI, China, March 13, 2025/APO Group/ –The African Energy Chamber (AEC) (https://EnergyChamber.org) – the voice of the African energy sector – signed two Memoranda of Understanding at the Invest in African Energies Forum in Shanghai on Thursday. The deals support China-Africa energy ties by facilitating partnerships and technology exchange between Chinese and African companies.

The first deal, signed with B2B technology company Tima Networks, will see the company bring its automated fleet management technology to Africa. Tima Networks is a software company that utilizes Artificial Intelligence to enhance EV efficiency and management, promoting technology-driven transportation. The partnership will work to implement this innovative fleet management technology across Africa, supporting the utilization and adoption of EVs across the continent.

The second deal, signed with Yunan County Chuangxing Industrial Investment Group, was a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement aimed at facilitating interactions between the Chinese and African energy and chemical industries. Under the terms of the deal, the parties will work together to encourage African firms and projects establish themselves in the Yunfu Yunan Industrial Park. The parties will also establish a platform for technological exchange and resource-sharing between Chinese and African enterprises to support sustainable development.

The Invest in African Energies Forum in Shanghai served as a prelude to the African Energy Week (AEW): Invest in African Energies conference, slated for September 29 to October 3 in Cape Town. As the largest event of its kind in Africa, AEW: Invest in African Energies fosters collaboration and investment in Africa. For Chinese companies, the event offers a strategic opportunity to gain insight into African projects while strengthening ties with African firms.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

Continue Reading

Business

Access Bank’s Africa Trade Conference Ignites New Era of Intra-Africa Commerce

Published

on

Africa Trade Conference

The prestigious African Icon Award was presented to IHS Group, Dangote Industries Limited, and MTN Group Limited for their significant contributions to Africa’s economic progress

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, March 13, 2025/APO Group/ –Access Bank PLC (www.AccessBankPLC.com) successfully hosted the inaugural Africa Trade Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, bringing together industry leaders, policymakers, and trade experts to drive solutions for accelerating intra-African trade and unlocking the continent’s economic potential. The conference tackled critical challenges, including limited access to capital, market information gaps, trust deficits between trading partners, and the urgent need for modernised trade infrastructure.

Roosevelt Ogbonna, Managing Director/CEO of Access Bank, delivered the opening remarks, setting the tone for discussions by highlighting the critical barriers hindering trade across Africa. He emphasised the urgent need for financial sector collaboration to facilitate seamless access to capital and foster a business environment where African enterprises can scale and compete globally.

 

“We must invest in the initiatives that ensure that we can bring businesses together, forge trust, and create the connections necessary for trade. In doing so, we must stamp out the narrative that ‘Made in Africa’ is inferior to any product made anywhere else in the world. We must buy Africa, be proud to wear Africa, and invest in Africa because that is what the continent needs to leap forward into the next generation,” Ogbonna stated.

With Africa’s population projected to surge to 2.5 billion by 2050 from 1.2 billion, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) stands as the most significant free trade initiative since the formation of the World Trade Organisation. By fostering economic integration, AfCFTA has the potential to reshape trade dynamics across the continent, creating a unified market that enhances industrialisation, boosts employment, and strengthens Africa’s global competitiveness. Recognising this transformative opportunity, H.E. Wamkele K. Mene, Secretary-General of AfCFTA, emphasised the urgency of fully implementing the agreement to unlock its immense benefits.

“The AfCFTA is not just a trade agreement; it is an instrument for Africa’s industrialisation and economic sovereignty. It is a tool that will enable us to break down historic trade barriers and build an Africa that is self-sufficient, competitive, and prosperous. But for this to happen, we must commit to operationalising the agreement fully, ensuring that businesses, particularly SMEs and women-led enterprises, have access to the information, capital, and platforms they need to thrive,” Mene stated.

Also, Kanayo Awani, Executive Vice President of Afreximbank, emphasised the importance of financing mechanisms that support African businesses in their expansion across borders. She reaffirmed Afreximbank’s commitment to championing trade finance solutions and infrastructure investments that will unlock Africa’s trade potential.

“At Afreximbank, we understand that trade finance is the lifeblood of economic development. Without it, businesses cannot scale, industries cannot innovate, and Africa cannot fully realise its trade potential. This is why we have developed instruments such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to facilitate seamless transactions across borders, reducing reliance on foreign currencies and strengthening intra-African trade,” Awani remarked.

We must invest in the initiatives that ensure that we can bring businesses together, forge trust, and create the connections necessary for trade

The conference featured an insightful testimonial from Nathalie Louat, Global Director at the IFC/World Bank Group, who pointed out the pivotal role of trade finance in enabling cross-border transactions and supporting financial inclusion. She underscored the long-standing partnership between IFC and Access Bank in fostering Africa’s economic resilience.

Several high-level panel discussions explored strategies to overcome trade barriers and enhance market access through innovative solutions. Experts from leading institutions, including Deutsche Bank, Traydstream, OWP Partners, Fiducia International, and more, examined how infrastructure improvements, digital solutions, and policy harmonisation could drive economic growth and boost intra-African trade.

Dr. Marc Auboin from the World Trade Organization (WTO) shared key insights on how digital transformation is reshaping Africa’s supply chain landscape, creating efficiency and unlocking new global market opportunities. Tanya Dos Santos-Ford from GIBS Business School also led a session on sustainable trade practices, emphasising the need for environmentally responsible economic growth strategies.

The event culminated in an awards ceremony recognising outstanding contributions to intra-African trade and economic transformation. Tradepass Commodities Limited (Ghana), Chemaf International FZE (DR Congo), and Harvest Group of Companies (Zambia) were honoured for their impact on SMEs and women-led trade enterprises. Bulkstream Limited (Kenya) and Electricidade de Moçambique (Mozambique) received awards for advancing intra-African trade, while Tennant Metals South Africa Pty Ltd was recognised as an Emerging Leader in Trade.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) was awarded the Climate Finance Leadership Award, while Afreximbank received the Champion of Intra-African Trade Award. The African Development Bank (AfDB) and Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) were celebrated for their roles in economic transformation and infrastructure finance, respectively. The prestigious African Icon Award was presented to IHS Group, Dangote Industries Limited, and MTN Group Limited for their significant contributions to Africa’s economic progress

As the conference ended, Seyi Kumapayi, Executive Director, African Subsidiaries at Access Bank, reaffirmed the institution’s commitment to supporting trade finance, fostering regional integration, and championing policies that create an enabling environment for businesses across Africa.

For inquiries:

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Access Bank PLC.

Continue Reading

Trending