Africa's upstream to feel transition squeeze

The continent’s oil production will decline in the 2020s while gas production will increase before starting to slip, according to the IEA

African crude output will decline this decade while gas production will make short-term gains before also starting to fall, according to the IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2022. The agency’s projections are based on a “sustainable Africa scenario”, in which the continent meets all of its energy-related development goals—including universal access to power by 2030 and the various national net-zero pledges and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) goals—and the rest of the world follows suit. But the IEA admits that “making this scenario a reality is a formidable task”. Export dependency The prospects for Africa’s oil production “hinge primarily on exports”, the IEA emphasises, and so are “gre