Why is Congo selling off oil and gas?
The president of Congo has launched tenders for 3 blocks of gas and 27 blocks of oil, but according to the hydrocarbon minister it is not acceptable that such an economically important sector is exploited at too low rates. So here are the companies that will dive in. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
On Thursday 28 July, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi launched tenders for 3 blocks of gas and 27 blocks of oil.
Spread across the country's major sedimentary basins, coastal basin, central basin, and basins of the western branch of the East African Rift, these resources are estimated at around 22 billion barrels of crude oil and 66 billion normal cubic meters (nm3 ) of gas.
Why this decision? According to the Congolese Minister of Hydrocarbons Didier Budimbu, it is not acceptable that such an important sector from an economic point of view potentially able to play a leading role within the country is exploited only at a rate that is around 4.5% %.
Precisely for this reason the Congolese authorities intend to free themselves from their dependence in the context of the mining sector and enter the oil production sector. In fact, at present the hydrocarbon sector contributes only 6% of the national budget but the possibility of exploiting it in the future could increase the share of the state revenue sector by up to 40%.
Given the importance of oil resources, it is not surprising that in the British economic newspaper Financial Times on July 19, Didier Budimbu pointed out that the major oil multinationals, namely TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil and Eni, are among those most interested in acquiring the blocks that will be placed on the auction.
As for our multinational, that is, Eni, it achieved substantial profits in the second quarter of 2022: in fact its net profit was multiplied by over four compared to the same period of 2021 for a revenue of 3.90 billion dollars.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/perche-il-congo-svende-petrolio-e-gas/ on Wed, 03 Aug 2022 08:06:21 +0000.