APPO Rallies NOCs, Afrexim Bank to Tackle Fossil Fuel Funding Challenge

Peter Uzoho

The African Petroleum Producers Association (APPO) is currently seeking stronger partnership with National Oil Companies (NOCs) of its member countries as well as the Africa Export-Import Bank (Afrexim-Bank) in search of ways to tackle funding challenge in the continent’s oil and gas sector.

The Secretary General of APPO, Dr Omar Farouk Ibrahim, said the cartel had gone beyond engaging ministers of petroleum of member nations but has extended invitations to all the NOCs in the continent for strong stakeholders meeting called ‘Forum of NOCs’, as part of the strategies to achieve its target.

In a presentation at the Sub Saharan Africa Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (SAIPEC) held in Lagos, Ibrahim further said APPO had floated the Africa Energy Investment Corporation (AEICOP) as a major step to provide alternative funding for oil and gas investments in the continent.

Now at the stage of hunting for seed capital for the AEICOP, he said he and the Acting Managing Director of AEICOP were recently in Cairo and had a meeting with the management of AfreximBank to seek the bank’s support for the sector.

Ibrahim said, “You will need to work with the operators and that’s exactly what we are trying to do. We will work with the ministries but we want the operators to be fully in this.”

He, however, warned that if no urgent action was taken to solve the funding challenge in the oil and gas industry, Africa’s huge hydrocarbon deposits would be left in the ground.