CAPE TOWN, South Africa, April 30, 2020/ -- By Caty Hirst, Director of Programming at Africa Oil & Power
COVID-19
has slowed global trade, but Equatorial Guinea is not relenting in its
drive for
investment and downstream diversification, said the country’s
Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons, H.E. Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima.
Equatorial Guinea’s Year of Investment 2020 campaign continues to move
ahead.
“Definitely the Year of Investment is still very
important,” said the Minister during a webinar hosted by Africa Oil
& Power on Monday. “2019 was the Year of Energy, and the Year of
Energy was to show to the world Equatorial Guinea … 2020 is the Year of
Investment. It is the year that we put our money where our mouth is. And
we are definitely going to continue.”
Projects already moving
ahead include the backfill of gas supply to gas processing facilities as
part of the Gas Megahub project, which is in the works with partners
Noble Energy and Marathon Oil, as well as preliminary work on a modular
refinery. These projects will move forward, despite the low oil price
environment caused by COVID-19, largely because they were already in
progress.
The pipelines for the backfill project are already
complete, and gas feed from the Alen field to backfill the EG LNG plant
at Punta Europa should come on stream by November 2020.
The Year
of Investment, planned to last throughout 2020 and include several
in-country conferences and a global investment roadshow, is adapting to
the new restrictions under COVID-19. Webinars and video conferencing are
just one way technology is keeping the country connected with
investors.
“By this time, everyone was supposed to be here in
Equatorial Guinea. We were supposed to be having a conference. We were
supposed to be signing a lot of contracts. But I am still signing
contracts,” Lima said on Wednesday.
Webinars and virtual
roadshows will continue throughout the year, and will culminate in a
Malabo conference on November 25-26, 2020. The Africa Oil &
Investment Forum will attract regional and international investors to
Malabo, as the country continues to engage at the regional and
international level.
The Year of Investment is laying the
groundwork for 2021, which will be the country’s year to focus on
petrochemicals, the Minister said. Equatorial Guinea has been addressing
downstream diversification efforts in recent years, with a focus on gas
monetization and building refining capacity. 2020 and 2021 will be
“lost years” for upstream oil and gas, he said, as projects are put on
hold and cancelled in the short term.
“Downstream is the future
of our industry. It is king. It will create jobs and enable us to use
the entirety of our entire resources to be processed in-country,” Lima
said. “Clearly, one of our solutions [to COVID-19] is going to be
diversification within oil and gas.”
New projects and investments
are expected to be announced in the fourth quarter of this year,
including the groundbreaking of Equatorial Guinea’s first refinery.
In
addition, the country is developing liquified natural gas for
LNG-to-power scenarios, for domestic and international use. Equatorial
Guinea is on track to complete the country’s first LNG regasification
plant by the end of 2020.
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