India eyes oil and gas in Africa, Central Asia

With most of the oil and gas discoveries being made in Africa and Central Asia in the last five years, energy-hungry India is keenly networking at the ongoing World Petroleum Congress to seek greater collaboration with these countries in the hydrocarbon sector.

"Africa presents a huge opportunity for us as it is estimated to hold over nine per cent of the world's reserves, most of which are still undiscovered. We want to participate more in Nigeria, Angola and some of the other West African countries," a senior Petroleum Ministry official of the Indian delegation said.

On offer are new exploration projects in a number of countries like South Africa, Namibia, Sudan and Madagascar that are keen to increase their output while Mozambique and Tanzania have emerged as first time gas producers.

According to a new publication 'African Oil and Gas: The New Horizon' released by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) at the conference, "Africa yields the highest return on investment - four times more than the G7 countries and twice as much as Asia."

Business advisers to the Petroleum Congress, the PwC's Africa Energy Group stated: "All these positive developments have resulted in the US and China being at the forefront of global energy consumers to seek more of their supplies in Africa."

The global consultants expect Africa to play an important role in easing the current supply and demand scenario, with "heightened interest in exploration and production projects on the continent."

India's recent experience in Nigeria where South Korea was given the first right of refusal in two of the exploration blocks for which state-owned ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) had emerged as front-runners "has proved that we have to be geared to take economic development projects along with bids for exploration," the official said.

During talks with senior company and government representatives by the Indian delegation, led by Petroleum Secretary SC Tripathi, it has emerged "that South Korea and China are cornering most of the opportunities as they are aggressively pushing ahead with proposals for socio-economic development projects also," the official said.

"While looking for opportunities at the full integrated value chain in the petroleum sector, we will have to look at other economic sectors, which poses a challenge," admitted the official.

Currently dominated by multinationals, African countries are in the process of bringinvelopment projects also," the official said.


Lola Nayar (Indo-Asian News Service)

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