Oil & Gas – RusselSmith |

Nigeria and Mozambique Lead Capital Expenditures Position for Upstream Projects

A global data and analytics company, GlobalData, recently released a report indicating that a total of 65 planned and announced crude and natural gas projects will begin operations in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2015 – 2018.

This come as no surprise as it was predicted earlier in the year by GlobalData that Sub-Saharan Africa’s gas production will grow 18% by 2021 to 9.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd). It was also mentioned that over 6.4 bcfd of natural gas in 2021 will be produced by conventional gas projects, while coal bed methane (cbm) projects will contribute 8.5 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) to Sub-Saharan Africa production in 2021.

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Floating LNG May be Key to Repositioning Gas in Africa

For over 50 years, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has existed as a means of transporting huge amounts of natural gas over long distances. The first commercial LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) plant was delivered in 1964, in Arzew, Algeria, and the first commercial trade of LNG occurred in 1964 between the UK and Algeria.

As estimated in the International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016), consumption of natural gas worldwide is projected to increase from 120 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) as measured in 2012 to 203 Tcf in 2040.

Today, the growing demand for LNG, coupled with environmental and community challenges, high costs of infrastructure and slow time-to-market for land-based LNG projects has encouraged several leading LNG players such as Shell, Petronas and ExxonMobil to develop Floating LNG plants as alternatives to land-based plants.

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Potential Oil Production Agreement: More Time Needed?

The global oil price plunged from $115 to less than $27 per barrel between June 2014 and January 2016(reuters.com), hitting its lowest level since 2003. Amidst an ongoing oversupply in the global oil market, Energy experts believe if global supply isn’t cut back, price will take a nosedive.
With a plan to cut back global supply in February, energy ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela, and Russia talked about the oil market situation in Doha and agreed that if other countries followed suit in freezing oil production, they will equally do same and they expected the deal to be finalized on the 17th of April, it is worthy of note to state that, Iran did not take part in this meeting. This meeting was attended by some 18 oil nations including OPEC’s leader Saudi Arabia and top non – OPEC producer Russia. The purpose of this meeting was to help balance supply and demand in the market by end of 2016, according to Reuters.

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Investment Opportunities In The Natural Gas Industry

The current situation of the Nigerian oil and gas industry begs the question “what next”? Many investors are in search of the next big opportunity in terms of profitability and acceptability. Coincidentally, a lot of investment opportunities can be found…

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The Oil and Gas Industry: Versatile vs Volatile

The global oil and gas industry has experienced a steady decline in the last three years primarily driven by the African and Middle East region, but the current instability in the industry does not deter a positive outlook as operators are positive that the industry will continue to grow over the next three years. It is expected that the industry will continue to be profitable based on an average benchmark oil price of $85-$90 per barrel.

Operators are implementing cost reduction strategies and focusing on operational excellence and innovation as a way of increasing their profitability despite declining revenue.

Local content has become a significant issue for the oil & gas industry, especially across Africa. Given the drive by governments to enable locals play more significant roles within the energy sector, we would expect increased pressure on operators to justify the utilisation of ‘non’ local resources. Nigeria has recorded some measure of success in this light.

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