The current estimates of Africa’s oil and gas reserves at 120-million barrels of crude oil and 632-trillion cubic feet of natural gas are considered “grossly conservative”, says African Petroleum Producers' Organisation (APPO) secretary-general Dr Omar Farouk Ibrahim.

“Increased exploration using enhanced technology will see these figures doubling – or more.”

Ibrahim spoke at the African Refiners and Distributors Association (ARDA) conference held in Cape Town this week.

He said recent oil and gas findings in Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Mauritania and Ghana confirmed APPO’s position.

He added, however, that the “sad reality” of the African oil and gas industry over the last 75 years had been that the search for reserves had been dictated by the needs of others, and not the needs of Africans.

“In, other words, it has never been Africa first.

“Put differently, when global oil and gas prices are predicted to go north, investors put a lot of money into exploration, but when they go south, they abandon all exploration.”

“The needs of the African continent of one-billion people with little access to modern energy is never considered in the search for energy,” noted Ibrahim.

“That explains why the minimum energy infrastructure we see on the African continent run from the oil and gas fields to the ports.

“Is it right that Africa exports 75% of its oil and 45% of its gas when the largest portion of the population is living without access to modern energy?”

ARDA president Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid echoed this sentiment – also mirroring that of recently elected US president Donald Trump’s trade policy of ‘America first.”

“All over the world countries are beginning to look inward – America first, and Europe has also been bonding together, which means we have no choice but to look inward.

“We must determine our own agenda for growth, because that is the only way to survive in a world where everyone cares only about themselves.

“We must develop Afrocentric solutions for the problems that confront us.”

For many years, Africa had accepted that others have the first right of refusal to the energy “that God has blessed Africa with”, said Ibrahim.

“Only when those others decided to decline our exports, is it that we considered making it accessible to our own people.”

Africa had been facing pressure from parties such as the EU to embrace the just energy transition to cleaner energy, away from fossil fuels, but the continent’s large oil and gas producers had proved hesitant to do so.

“It took the energy transition for us to realise our mistakes,” said Ibrahim.

“It took the decision of those on whom we have been heavily dependent on for decades to say that they don’t want our energy, for us to realise that we have never controlled the finance, the technologies, or the markets of the lifelines of our national economies.

“But it is better late than never. African is changing for the better.”

Ibrahim said Africa’s oil and gas industry – through organisations such as APPO and ARDA – was focusing on training people in the technologies needed to exploit the continent’s oil and gas reserves; developing regional, crossborder and continental energy markets through, for example, the construction of intra-continent pipelines; while it was also working to establish the African Energy Bank, which was waiting for the completion of its Nigerian headquarters to start operations.