Collaboration is key to a successful energy transition

In a ministerial panel titled Increasing collaboration between the Global North and Global South for a successful transitional, panelists agreed that increasing collaboration across nations is key to ensuring a successful energy transition. While governments and private companies are establishing more cross-border partnerships than ever before, His Excellency Haitham Al Ghais, Secretary General, OPEC, believes that energy inequities need to be addressed as well.

He said: “We live in a world today where there's so much energy inequality that Heathrow Airport in London consumes more energy than the whole country of Sierra Leone, to give an example. So, at OPEC, we have always been advocating for the world requiring more energy. Now, when I say more energy, I mean all forms and all sources of energy will be needed.” Cultivating energy requires capital but the global south needs finance further emphasising the need for energy equality.

“It's not Africa that's responsible for the climate issue we're facing. Africa has emitted around 3% of global emissions for a continent the size of 1.2 billion. You can look up who has been responsible for historical CO2 emissions from the start of the Industrial Revolution. It's not OPEC member countries either. It's not oil and gas producers. So when we talk about addressing these issues, it has to be taken in the sense of fairness and equity as well. And that's what we try to promote for OPEC,” he continued. “So again, we are not dismissing anything as OPEC. We are doing everything we can to encourage this dialog cooperation, including through financing, through the OPEC Fund, we also have the charter of cooperation, which we signed in 2019 which is a platform that is open for oil producers to participate in. With this exchange of technologies, exchange of experiences between various member countries and non-OPEC producers who are not members of

OPEC that can participate in this platform to gain access to the best practices being implemented in our member countries,” said Al Ghais. Uganda is making every effort to finalise the exploitation of its petroleum resources. “We are working with TotalEnergies, who will be producing 190,000 barrels of crude oil every day for 25 years…The arrangement was that 60,000 barrels would be refined while the rest would be exported through the East African Crude Oil Pipeline,” said Honourable Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu, Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Republic of Uganda. His Excellency Edmond Nonie, Deputy Minister of Energy, Sierra Leone shared that his country has 20 million barrels of oil that can be developed, and they are looking forward to securing partners who are interested in that.

“We've done some tendering of some oil blocks already where we secured Nigerian investors who have come on board to develop some, and this speaks a lot to the importance of South-South cooperation and South-South investment because at times within the region, you see partnerships, or you see players who are willing to come in when other players, probably in the Global North don't have as much of a risk appetite, or they don't understand the region as much as some of our regional counterparts do,” he said. “Ghana has 5000 megawatts in solar capacity and they’re currently making use of 3200 so they have a significant amount that they're looking to sell across the West Africa Power Pool,” he continued.

“We're [Sierra Leone] also looking to buy from them. And this is a country that is at least five countries away from us, so West Africa Power Pool projects is a great example of success, in terms of regional trade, so it's exciting times,” said Nonie. With so many positive examples of collaboration shared, the panel believes that, globally, we are moving in the right direction. “We need to keep encouraging the spirit of having oil and gas producers, OPEC gas producers, oil and gas industry at the table, not just because we make up so much of today's energy mix, but because the oil and gas industry has innovative solutions,” said Al Ghais.