GWPF Newsletter: African Leaders Say Their Need For Coal And Oil Outweighs Climate Concerns

“Anybody out of Africa saying we should not develop those fields is criminal.” 

In this newsletter:

1) African Leaders Say Their Need For Coal And Oil Outweighs Climate Concerns
Reuters, 8 November 2019
 
2) African Countries Showcase Oil and Gas Investment Opportunities at Africa Oil Week
Africa News, 7 November 2019

 
3) The New Scramble For Africa Is All About Providing Energy
The Daily Maverick, 8 November 2019
 
4) Africa’s Energy Future Matters For The World, Says IEA Report
Power Engineering, 8 November 2019
 
5) Chile And The Revolt Against Costly Climate Policies
H. Sterling Burnett, American Thinker, 6 November 2019
 
6) For Britons, Petrol Vehicles Top List For Next Car Purchase
Fleet Point, 7 November 2019
 
 7) And Finally: Prof Mickey Mouse Climate Petition Blocked
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 7 November 2019

Full details:

1) African Leaders Say Their Need For Coal And Oil Outweighs Climate Concerns
Reuters, 8 November 2019

CAPE TOWN/LONDON (Reuters) - A handful of protesters on the ground floor of the cavernous Cape Town International Convention Centre spread fake oil on the ground and chanted, demanding an end to fossil fuels. Two floors above, the hundreds of delegates at Africa Oil Week were largely unaware – and mostly unmoved – by the display.



“Under no circumstances are we going to be apologizing,” said Gabriel Obiang Lima, energy minister of Equatorial Guinea, adding that they need to exploit those resources to create jobs and boost economic development.

“Anybody out of the continent saying we should not develop those fields, that is criminal. It is very unfair.”

The tension keenly felt at oil conferences in Europe was largely absent over the three-day event in Cape Town; there was little focus on climate change, apart from the shadow renewables cast over long-term demand.

In contrast, investor and government pressure to address climate change has fundamentally altered oil events in Europe.

While no oil-producing country has stopped developing fossil fuel resources, pledges such as Britain’s promise to be net carbon neutral by 2050 or Norway’s national carbon tax show that governments acknowledge a need to shift away from fossil fuels.

In Cape Town, African leaders touted the good that oil, gas and even coal can bring on a continent where some 600 million people lack access to electricity.

 “Energy is the catalyst for growth,” said Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s energy minister and national chair of the ruling African National Congress.

“They even want to tell us to switch off all the coal-generated power stations,” he said. “Until you tell them, ‘you know we can do that, but you’ll breathe fresh air in the darkness’.”

Full story
 
2) African Countries Showcase Oil and Gas Investment Opportunities at Africa Oil Week
Africa News, 7 November 2019

Several African countries have used the Africa Oil Week (AOW) event in Cape Town this week to promote their oil and gas sectors to a global audience of investors, suppliers and other key stakeholders.

Senegal’s Oil and Energy Minister Mahamadou Makhtar Cisse used the platform to launch, for the first time in the history of petroleum exploration in his country, a licensing round of three blocks of sediment basin.

The licensing round would be promoted at international oil conferences in London, Houston, and Dakar during a first phase of the process, while energy companies would be able to evaluate the blocks’ potential between the end of January and end of July 2020, the minister said.

Senegal has seen predominantly natural gas discoveries offshore in recent years, most of which are shared with neighbouring Mauritania.

Angola’s newly formed national oil, gas and biofuels agency, ANGP, announced that the country has formed a consortium with five international oil companies, including Eni and Chevron, to develop liquefied natural gas (LNG) for its Soyo plant.

The consortium’s project, costing an initial $2 billion, is expected to start production by 2022.

Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Irene Muloni, is leading a delegation of private and public sector players from Uganda’s oil and gas sector at AOW.

Over the course of the week, in a National Showcase, Uganda is highlighting the ongoing second licensing round for oil exploration, which covers five highly prospective blocks with relatively good seismic and other data, Minister Muloni said.

Ghana told AOW delegates that plans, revising its laws on oil and gas licenses, sent to parliament last week, are an effort to spur production, and will revoke licenses from four companies that have not developed their assets.

Full story
 
3) The New Scramble For Africa Is All About Providing Energy
The Daily Maverick, 8 November 2019

The scramble for African resources has generally been focused on the extraction of hydrocarbons and minerals for export. A new scramble is now taking shape to target Africa as a market for energy consumption, with gas-fired power lighting the way.



One of the key themes from this year’s Africa Oil Week conference in Cape Town is the emerging African market for energy. The world’s poorest continent is also the most energy-deprived. Demand is surging because of demographics and potential economic growth, which could produce a strong economic cycle if industrialisation is twinned with urbanisation.

“Most people without access to power are in Africa and the forecasts for population growth are mostly here in Africa,” Neal Anderson, the president and CEO of global energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie told Business Maverick on the sidelines of the conference. “Access to energy is a fundamental human right and Africa is going to be key to growth in energy consumption.”

Indeed, the United States, which has become the world’s top oil and gas producer because of the shale revolution, is eyeing Africa as a market for its fast-growing supplies of liquid natural gas (LNG).

“We expect to be a net energy exporter next year, but we’re already a net exporter of natural gas – something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago,” Steven Winberg, the US assistant secretary for fossil energy, said in a keynote address to the conference.
Pointedly, he flogged US LNG to the audience:

“I think that’s an important fact to remember should you consider the potential of US LNG to help diversify your resource supply and meet energy needs on the continent.”

This is a sea change. Historically, the US has been a huge consumer of African resources, from ivory in the 19th century to oil, gold and platinum in recent decades. But as an emerging net energy exporter, the US is looking for markets for its resources, and Africa is on that radar screen.

“Africa is one of the drivers of global energy demand,” Frank Fannon, assistant secretary of state for energy in the US State Department, told Business Maverick. He noted that broad access to energy was a “precondition for political stability,” so the issue for the US, which is concerned about Islamist militancy on the continent, is also linked to security. That is one of the drivers of the US Power Africa initiative, one of the flagship African policies of the Obama administration that has been retained by the Trump White House.

The statistics on African energy use certainly show that this is a market with massive growth potential. According to the International Energy Agency, 95% of the global population without access to electricity is found in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. Africa also has the world’s fastest-growing population, so the potential for increased energy consumption is huge.

South Africa’s Mines and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe also warmed to this theme. Noting that Africa has long exported its hydrocarbons to the rest of the world while the region remained energy-deficient itself, he told a media briefing at the conference that: “We must consume sizeable amounts of what we produce and export what is left.”

Full story
 
4) Africa’s Energy Future Matters For The World, Says IEA Report
Power Engineering, 8 November 2019

Africa is set to become increasingly influential in shaping global energy trends over the next two decades as it undergoes the largest process of urbanisation the world has ever seen, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.



Africa Energy Outlook 2019 finds that current policy and investment plans in African countries are not enough to meet the energy needs of the continent’s young and rapidly growing population. Today, 600 million people in Africa do not have access to electricity and 900 million lack access to clean cooking facilities.

The number of people living in Africa’s cities is expected to expand by 600 million over the next two decades, much higher than the increase experienced by China’s cities during the country’s 20-year economic and energy boom.

Africa’s overall population is set to exceed 2 billion before 2040, accounting for half of the global increase over that period. These profound changes will drive the continent’s economic growth, infrastructure development and, in turn, energy demand, which is projected to rise 60 per cent to around 1,320 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2040, based on current policies and plans.

The new report is the IEA’s most comprehensive and detailed work to date on energy across the African continent.

Key report findings

Current plans would leave 530 million people on the continent still without access to electricity in 2030. But with the right policies, it could reach that target while also becoming the first continent to develop its economy mainly through the use of modern energy sources.

“Africa has a unique opportunity to pursue a much less carbon-intensive development path than many other parts of the world,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director. “To achieve this, it has to take advantage of the huge potential that solar, wind, hydropower, natural gas and energy efficiency offer.

 For example, Africa has the richest solar resources on the planet but has so far installed only 5 GW of solar photovoltaics (PV), which is less than 1 per cent of global capacity.”

If policy makers put a strong emphasis on clean energy technologies, solar PV could become the continent’s largest electricity source in terms of installed capacity by 2040.

Natural gas, meanwhile, is likely to correspond well with Africa’s industrial growth drive and need for flexible electricity supply.

Full story
 
5) Chile And The Revolt Against Costly Climate Policies
H. Sterling Burnett, American Thinker, 6 November 2019

Add Chile to the growing list of countries whose governments are suffering a backlash as average people, tired of elites forcing costly climate policies down their throats, take to the streets to protest higher energy costs.

Although, undoubtedly, many issues stoked the protests on the streets across Chile, the Washington Post rightly notes that what finally drove the public to take to the streets was the government’s decision to curry favor with international agencies by pushing expensive energy restrictions to fight purported climate change. 

As the Post states, “[T]he catalyst [behind the protests] was a proposal to raise public transport fares and energy bills.  There is ample evidence from across the world that these will incite rebellion like nothing else — a point that those who hope to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions via a carbon tax should bear in mind.”

Climate alarmists at international agencies heaped praise on Chile’s government for its aggressive climate policies in recent years.  The United Nations awarded former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet a Champion of the Earth prize in 2017 for rapidly replacing relatively inexpensive fossil fuels used for electricity with much more expensive wind and solar power.

The Chilean government’s climate policies are causing the country’s people to suffer.  Chile’s electricity prices have risen 18% in just the past year — making Chile’s electricity costs the highest in all of South America.  Before the riots, the government had announced that electricity prices would increase an additional 9% by the end of 2019, a plan it canceled in response to the violence in the streets.

The final straw for Chileans was the announcement of Metro fare hikes.  The Metro is a critical source of mobility for the nation’s poor, and they revolted at the thought that even as coal, oil, and gas prices remained low, prices to ride the Metro were going up so the government could reap praise for running its transit system on wind and solar power. The people finally had enough!  The protests and riots forced Chilean president Sebastián Piñera to announce that Chile would no longer host a U.N. climate conference, previously scheduled for December.

Chile’s travails are just the latest evidence of the public’s growing skepticism concerning the value of costly climate policies.  Beginning in 2016, with the election of noted climate catastrophe skeptic Donald Trump as president of the United States, climate alarmist governments and movements have taken their lumps on the streets and at the polls.

In progressive Washington State, for instance, voters in 2016 and again in 2018 directly rejected referenda that would have imposed taxes on carbon dioxide to fight climate change.

Perhaps the most visible and violent rejection of policies to raise energy prices in the name of fighting climate change — prior to the Chilean riots — came in France in 2018.  For months, protesters donning yellow vests took to the streets to protest scheduled increases in fuel taxes, electricity prices, and stricter vehicle emissions controls.  French president Emmanuel Macron claimed that these increases were necessary to meet the country’s greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement. 

After the first four weeks of protest, Macron’s government canceled the climate action plan.

Full post
 
6) For Britons, Petrol Vehicles Top List For Next Car Purchase
Fleet Point, 7 November 2019

Despite the environment being the biggest driver for switching to an electric vehicle, new research by digital transformation agency, Somo, has identified that the interest in petrol vehicles is not declining.

Traditional fuels still the main focus on car purchasers
In fact, over half would consider purchasing a petrol engine vehicle next, and, surprisingly, a quarter are still considering diesel engines.

In an independent survey of 2000 UK drivers all looking to change vehicles within the next 12 months, and as part of a white paper titled Driving mass adoption of electric cars: are customers ready to switch?, only a third surveyed said they would actually consider moving to an electric car, owing to a number of concerns around practicality.

Whilst the government’s £1.5bn Road to Zero strategy aims to make the UK ‘the best place in the world to own an electric vehicle’ and despite the recent proposals to issue green-coloured number plates, the research clearly shows there is a lot more to do in switching consumer behaviours in favour of electric.

Full story
 
7) And Finally: Prof Mickey Mouse Climate Petition Blocked
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 7 November 2019

Dozens of signatories including Mickey Mouse and Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore from Hogwarts have been ­removed from an Alliance of World Scientists declaration of a “climate emergency”.



Access to the 11,000 name-petition that accompanied a statement of concern published in BioScience on Tuesday was blocked on Thursday.

A statement issued by ­Oregon State University said “an administrative error unfortunately saw the inclusion of a small number of invalid names”. The Alliance of World Scientists petition included Prof Mickey Mouse from the Mickey Mouse School of the Blind, Namibia.

“We have to date removed 34 names from the original list, most of which were duplicates.”

Concern about the petition, which was heavily promoted internationally as a call for action on climate change, was sparked by questions about some of its celebrity signatories.

Mickey Mouse from the Mickey Mouse School of the Blind, Namibia made it through onto an official list published along with the BioScience article.

After the statement had been submitted to the journal, claiming the support of 11,000 world scientists, Mickey was joined on the list by Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts.

The first signature on the online list was Araminta Aadvark, professor of Zoology at Univer­sity of Neasden, UK.

Neasden University is believed to be a fictitious university promoted by the British satirical magazine Private Eye that was printed in Neasden.

Full story

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.