The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, posited the need for African nations to double down efforts in oil and gas exploration despite the world’s shift toward renewable energy, adding that a finance bank would serve as a boon to help grow the sector.
He said this in Abuja while hosting a diplomat from Equatorial Guinea, the Minister of Hydrocarbon, Gabriel Lima.
Sylva stressed that the bank, which he dubbed ‘African Energy Bank’ would serve as the African Development Bank (AfDB) but for the oil and gas sector, to provide as financial provenance for the exploration work.
He said, “The PIA is a watershed moment for us in Nigeria. This is the time for us to get out of Nigeria to market this investment environment.
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“We must not go out of Africa to attract investments. We must set up structures to fund our system. If we insist on the exploration of our oil and gas reserves when the world is cutting down on investments in the sector, we must set a financial institution, an African Energy Bank to develop the oil and gas sector.
“If we go into more exploration in Africa, we will find more oil and gas and must we leave it under the ground because the other countries are racing for renewable energy? We must find a way to explore it and that’s why we need an energy bank along the line of the African Development Bank (AfDB)”.
He added that African countries should look inward and form stronger diplomatic ties to make intra-African trade better without reliance on western nations.
“None of us can grow without each other. It is not all the time that we run to Europe or America or elsewhere for support. We need to keep talking and we need mutual cooperation to solve our own problem. We can achieve this under African Petroleum Producers’ Organization’s (APPO).
“It is not good for us to go far to do business. We need to cooperate with our neighbours,” Sylva noted.
