Page 13 - AfrOil Week 27 2022

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil

News of Barkindo’s death elicited sadness from of the passing of my mentor, friend, confidant
many prominent African oil and gas industry and big brother Barkindo. One of the few per-
figures. sons I talk to many times daily. Joked about his
For example, NJ Ayuk, the executive chair- speech at NOG. He told me about his meeting
man of the African Energy Chamber (AEC), with Buhari. He sent me messages at midnight
said in a Twitter post: “Got up to the sad news and I got up and he is gone.” ™

Barkindo: Downstream factors

play key role in oil price volatility

GLOBAL/NIGERIA MOHAMMAD Sanusi Barkindo, the late sec- also stressed that the constraint on the down-
retary-general of OPEC, said just hours before stream sector was a global phenomenon that
his death that capacity constraints in the down- was not being addressed in a consistent way in
stream sector were making a more significant every region.
contribution to the volatility of world crude oil Overall, he stated, worldwide refining
prices than many market observers realise. capacity dropped by more than 330,000 bar-
Speaking to the Nigerian newspaper Van- rels per day (bpd) in 2021 “and remained below
guard, Barkindo noted that upstream opera- pre-pandemic levels last year, despite the robust
tors were all too often blamed for fluctuations global economic rebound.”
in prices. Producers have become “a favourite This decline occurred despite the addition of
scapegoat for the current market conditions,” new capacity in the Middle East, China, Africa
he remarked. and India, and it occurred because refining
This focus on upstream operations overlooks capacity actually dropped among member states
the constraints created in other parts of the value of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
chain, he said. and Development (OECD) for the third year in
“[This] discounts the current capacity chal- a row in 2021, he explained.
lenges that also plague the downstream, espe- “Comparing the pre-pandemic year of 2019
cially with regard to transportation of fuel,” he to 2021, OECD refining capacity fell by a sig-
said. “Refinery closures in recent years, coupled nificant 1.5mn [bpd], or 3.3%,” he said. “Given
with a number of untimely accidents at impor- the global refining squeeze at the moment, the
tant regional refineries, have curtailed supplies construction of the Dangote Refinery in Lagos,
and helped create the energy market volatility of with its capacity of around 650,000 barrels per
recent months.” day, is a huge step in the direction of addressing
Barkindo said he had referred to this point not only Nigeria’s longer-term demand but sig-
in his keynote speech at the Nigeria Oil & Gas nificantly improving the capacity outlook of the
Conference & Exhibition (NOG) on July 5. He global downstream sector.” ™

TotalEnergies rep says gas is Nigeria’s

best option for low-carbon future

NIGERIA VICTOR Bandele, deputy managing director be an active partner in efforts to reduce energy
for deepwater operations at TotalEnergies Nige- poverty.
ria, said on July 4 that his company saw natural “The federal government of Nigeria has set
gas as Nigeria’s best option for expanding access a target of providing electricity access to 80%
to electricity while keeping carbon emissions in of our population by 2030. It is something that
check. should spur us as an industry to work with the
Speaking at the 2022 Nigerian Oil and Gas direction of the government,” he said. “We in
(NOG) Conference in Abuja, Bandele expressed TotalEnergies are willing to partner with the
support for the government’s domestic gasifica- government to advance these ambitions to make
tion strategy, saying that TotalEnergies hoped to it a reality.”

Week 27 06•July•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P13