Gas is better than oil for Africa, conference delegates hear
Gas projects were, for Africa, better than oil projects. So highlighted energy consultant and former Trinidad & Tobago Energy Minister Eric Williams, in a panel discussion, on Thursday, at the Africa Energy Week 2025 conference, being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
“Gas is both a fuel and a feedstock,” he stressed. This dual nature meant that gas projects gave a country a better chance of achieving development than petroleum projects would. He was really glad at how gas projects were developing across the continent, as the benefits of gas could be transferred to wider society.
As for the question of whether or not African countries could afford gas projects, he pointed out that that was reliant on a range of factors.
“It depends on the source of gas,” he explained. “Is it associated [with crude oil] or non-associated? Is it onshore or offshore? If offshore, is it in shallow water or deep water? What many African countries are lacking is a transmission grid, to move the electrons. What you need is the right price for the right mix across the value chain.”
What was right for one country would not be right for another country.
“In order to create an electricity supply to the people of the continent, we also have to use gas in domestic contexts,” he pointed out. It was necessary to create local markets, to generate local economic returns and benefit the local people. The gas should not be just liquefied and exported.
Because gas could be used for industrial activities, the profits from such sales should be used to cross-subsidise the cost of gas-generated electricity, he affirmed, while noting that economists did not like cross-subsidisation.
He highlighted that his country, Trinidad & Tobago had developed a local gas market long ago, when natural gas was seen to have no intrinsic value. In fact, at the time, it had been seen, by oil men, as a curse.
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