French oil firm, TotalEnergies plans to invest $600 million in 2024 to boost exploration and production efforts in the Republic of Congo, snubbing Nigeria’s oil and gas industry for the second time consecutively.
The CEO of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanne, announced last week in Kenya that the business decided to invest $6 billion in Angola rather than Nigeria because of the latter’s inconsistent policies and other problems.
In a recent development, the business declared that it would invest $600 million in oil production and exploration in Congoâagain ignoring Nigeria, the continent’s biggest oil producer.
The investment is expected to fund exploration and sustain production in the nation’s deep offshore Moho Nord field, per a BusinessDay report.
The statement read:
The announcement states that the investment will support exploration and uphold production in the deep offshore Moho Nord field of the nation. This field produces about 140,000 barrels per day (bpd), or almost half of all oil produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
NJ Ayuk, the executive chairman of the AEC stated:
In addition to TotalEnergies’s investment plan, the Republic of Congo is expected to gain from a new strategic alliance with Algeria in the energy and hydrocarbons sectors.
Prior to this, on May 21, the Ministers of Mines and Energy of Algeria, Mohamed Arkab, and Hydrocarbons, Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua, of the Republic of Congo, signed a memorandum of agreement to facilitate the creation of a new bilateral relations roadmap.
Additionally, the arrangement will facilitate the sharing of experience in the downstream oil sector between Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach and the Raoul Ominga-led SNPC.
Additionally, the two nations have conveyed their hope and support for the creation of an African Energy Bank, which will concentrate funding on gas and oil projects throughout the continent.
TimesNow.com.ng earlier reported that Microsoft, founded by billionaire businessman Bill Gates, and G42 are working together to build a $1 billion geothermal-powered data centre in Kenya.
G42 is a leading artificial intelligence company based in the United Arab Emirates.
This development comes after Microsoft shut down its Africa development centre in Nigeria, rendering about 200 people jobless.
Source: TimesNow.com.ng
