African countries are planning to roll out their own financing instruments for oil and gas projects amid increasing pressure from Western financial institutions to abandon the exploitation of these resources. The group of 18 countries needs $5 billion to launch what they call an energy bank.
They call themselves the Organization of African Oil Producing Countries, and according to a recent report by the Financial Times, resource-rich African countries are frustrated by the refusal of Western banks to finance the development of oil and gas fields, which they believe they have sovereign rights. It's hard to argue with that. "These countries are in the development phase, and you can't suddenly move to green [transition]...... You can't simply say that if the money is cut off, they can't do oil," said Haytham El Maayergi, executive vice president of global trade at the African Export-Import Bank, in an interview with the publication. The African Export-Import Bank is working with these 18 countries to establish this new institution.
Africa is the continent with the smallest carbon footprint. It is also an untapped continent rich in oil and gas resources. Under pressure from pro-transition Western governments, international lenders such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank have stopped financing such energy projects, limiting these countries' access to their own resources, as countries like the United States are doing.
According to the Financial Times, the United States is the second largest shareholder of the African Development Bank. Not only that, Biden administration officials have recently praised the latest shale oil and gas boom in the United States, while the administration's representative at the African Development Bank has supported Africa not to develop oil and gas. This must be harsh.
"The situation in Africa is completely different from other places." El Maayergi of the African Export-Import Bank told the Financial Times that much of Africa's hydrocarbon wealth is untapped, unlike some traditional oil and gas producing regions, which has helped alleviate acute poverty in many parts of the continent, where 600 million people do not have access to electricity and up to 1 billion use charcoal, dung and wood for cooking.
Once again, institutions like the World Bank – or, indeed, private banks – have a hard time refuting the assertion that African countries have the right to receive the same benefits from hydrocarbons as Western countries have received over the past few decades. This will be especially difficult because the transition is trickier than its designers anticipated, and the Western world is still largely as dependent on oil and gas as it once was.
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文章来源：African Nations Plan To Launch Their Own 'Energy Bank' | OilPrice.com
Translated and edited by China International Energy Public Opinion Center