RE: Europe Returns to Coal and Lessons for Africa

Ndubuisi, in your write-up of June 28, titled: Europe Returns to Coal and Lessons for Africa, you said: “I have written here that Africa must not allow Europe to write our energy policy. When Europe says that you should discard coal, watch very carefully, it is very convenient for Europe to do away with coal. Simply, its policy framework which it exports to the whole world is based on the thesis of its comparative advantages.”

This is a good one. It tells us in the Third World, especially, the African countries that the so-called Energy Transition is an imperialism designed to keep Africa and the rest of the poor countries in perpetual economic slavery. Your write-up points out the duplicity of the so-called Advanced World. But it contrasts with your year analyses of Dangote Refinery. Perhaps, because of your unflinching belief on Energy Transition , you did not  believe that the first private refinery in Nigeria has a future.

Below are  some of the points you made about  Dangote Refinery in one of your analyses:

“Dangote Group is building a refinery. But I do think it is off by at least ten years to extract the maximum value on that investment. Though Nigeria continues to import petroleum products, distorting our balance of payments, and crushing the Naira, my model is that the refinery business will do well, marginally. Yes, the refinery will fix market friction but it would be distorted in years. As I drive across America, a popular scene now is closed gas stations, picking up where malls stopped…”

“Looking at all trajectories Aliko Dangote is getting poorer despite doing more! It is a paradox because technically Dangote has improved his asset quality over the last seven years, as Dangote Group evolves to become an industrialized conglomerate.”

‘Simply, once Ford, GM, Toyota etc stop making fossil-powered cars, Nigerians cannot get special treatments. Because we do not make cars, we have to adjust! The refineries of the future are charging stations and not crude oil refining. In the U.S., most refineries are going bankrupt because in the next few years, the cost of buying an electric car would be at parity with fossil-fueled cars.”

“Do not put so much power in refinery business as a business for decades. The useful life of that sector is in years, not decades. We expect Tesla to produce EV cars that would be as affordable as Toyota, Honda, etc in the coming years. But Ford, GM and Toyota may get there before it.”

In conclusion , you  wrote : “So, my thesis is this: the best refinery business of the future in Nigeria, starting 2030 is charging stations because the world will not walk back on the march to EV because Nigeria likes their hydrocarbonated cars.”

This write-up is outright de-marketing of Dangote Refinery.  Whether you know it or  not , Dangote Refinery is the best  thing that has happened in Nigeria and Africa in general.

Dangote Oil Refinery is a 650,000 barrels per day (BPD) integrated refinery project under construction in the Lekki Free Zone near Lagos, Nigeria. It is expected to be Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility.

The Pipeline Infrastructure at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is the largest anywhere in the world, with 1,100 kilometers to handle 3 Billion Standard Cubic Foot of gas per day. The Refinery alone has a 435MW Power Plant that is able to meet the total power requirement of Ibadan DisCo.

The Refinery will meet 100% of the Nigerian requirement of all refined products and also have a surplus of each of these products for export. Dangote Petroleum Refinery is a multi-billion dollar project that will create a market for $21 Billion per annum of Nigerian Crude. It is designed to process Nigerian crude with the ability to also process other crudes.

This is what the advanced  countries want to scuttle with their so-called Energy transition, which can be seen as imperialism. As Hamza Hamouchene points out  “Any talk about green transition and sustainability must not become a façade for neocolonial schemes of plunder and domination.”

Energy transitions are never just about economics, engineering, or science. Rather, the question is why the use of specific scientific or engineering techniques makes sense at a particular time and leads to specific energy outcomes. The transitions could be related to imperialist projects such as the partition of Africa or the Nazi expansion into Eastern Europe; to a specific political party coming to power riding on a popular wave of megadevelopmentalism; or the belief that certain energy forms have detrimental effects on the environment and should not be pursued.

Please read : NOVEMBER 3, 2021, 5:56 PM  FP : oreignpolicy.com/2021/11/03/cop26-climate-colonialism-africa-norway-world-bank-oil-gas/

With natural gas prices at record highs in Europe, Norway is raking it in. The country is Europe’s second-largest gas supplier after Russia—and has just agreed to increase natural gas exports by 2 billion cubic meters to alleviate the continent’s acute energy shortage. Its neighbors, such as Britain, are grateful for every dollop of gas as winter approaches.

Yet even as wealthy Norwegians count their kroners thanks to rising prices and booming exports, their government is working hard to stop some of the world’s poorest countries from producing their own natural gas. Along with seven other Nordic and Baltic countries, Norway has been lobbying the World Bank to stop all financing of natural gas projects in Africa and elsewhere as soon as 2025—and until then only in “exceptional circumstances,” as an unpublished statement by the group, seen by Foreign Policy, details. At COP26, 20 countries went even further, pledging to stop all funding for overseas fossil fuel projects beginning next year. Instead, the Nordic and Baltic countries suggest, the World Bank should finance clean energy solutions in the developing world “such as green hydrogen and smart micro-grid networks.”

The idea that some of the poorest people on Earth will be using green hydrogen—possibly the most complex and expensive energy technology that exists—and building out “smart micro-grid networks” in just a few years at anywhere near the scale required is absurd. Not even solar energy or wind power—if it could be built out quickly enough—could fuel development in the global south without backup power using fossil fuels, of which gas is the cleanest by far. In sub-Saharan Africa, which has large gas fields offshore and includes many of the world’s poorest countries, a ban on financing gas projects would practically end support for the critical energy infrastructure necessary to support economic development and raise living standards—including electricity for homes, schools, and factories; industrial heat for producing cement and steel; the carbon dioxide that is an essential component of synthetic fertilizer; and liquefied gas for transportation and cooking fuel.

That last example makes perfectly clear what Norway’s fight against natural gas means for the world’s poor. About 3.8 million people die prematurely each year from the effects of indoor air pollution, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of these deaths occur among the 2.6 billion people in poor countries who still burn wood, coal, charcoal, or animal dung indoors for cooking. Women and children doing household chores are particularly exposed to this toxic smoke, which penetrates deep into the lungs. The switch to bottled cooking gas—promoted on a large scale by India, China, and the United Nations—is saving countless lives in the developing world. That’s one reason why the U.N.—where developing countries have a stronger voice than in Oslo, Washington, or Berlin—lists natural gas among clean energy sources and is promoting the switch to cooking gas in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, which call for global access to affordable clean energy.

In the conclusion of your analysis on coal you stated:” This is the deal: Africa must define its future based on its positioning and improve itself so that these countries and regions do not toss it around. Across Africa, many factories which were powered by coals were encouraged to shut down to save the world from burning. But here instead of Europe following through, they ignored their books and are making coals friends again.”

This is exactly what African countries  are doing. The climatic problems witnessed by the world today is not from Africa, hence the continent should not be made bear the brunt.  A recent  declaration  by EU-AU Summit calls for an energy transition that is “fair, just and equitable”, taking into account “specific and diverse orientations of the African countries with regards to access to electricity”.