Angola elected to the presidency of the Organization of African Petroleum Producers

With the election of Angola, the presidency of the APPO will be exercised in 2022 by the minister of Petroleum Resources, Diamantino Pedro Azevedo.

In the communiqué that came out of the meeting, the 14 member countries of the APPO also decided that the next session will take place in Angola in the last quarter of 2022, on a date to be indicated by the national authorities.

At the meeting held on Tuesday in the Algerian capital, the APPO council of ministers decided to "continue to explore the enormous resources of oil and gas (...) for the economic emancipation of its peoples, in addition to exploring the use of renewable energies" .

The communiqué highlights that at the top of the agenda of the ministerial discussions was the "future of the oil and gas industry in Africa in light of the global quest for energy transition".

"The current approach to the energy transition is a unilateral imposition, in which developed countries, which for over a hundred years have been using fossil fuels to grow their economies and societies and have always been aware of the dangers of emissions, now tell the world that fossil fuels are dangerous for humanity and that everyone should abandon them", reads the statement.

The document highlights that the ministers "noted that this aggressive push for the energy transition comes at a time when African economies are about to embark on industrialization, which requires a lot of energy, while the economies of developed countries now require less energy because of to its transformation from manufacturing to the production of knowledge and artificial intelligence".

Regarding the financing of energy projects on the continent, African ministers decided to assess the public and private sectors to secure the necessary funds to continue financing the oil and gas industry.

"Africa will have to look for knowledge, technology, finance and markets for its energy resources. The council of ministers noted that there is potential as Africa has a huge population of 1.3 billion people. All it needs is to be mobilized and trained to be able to buy energy", maintains the APPO.

With the call to abandon oil and gas production due to its adverse effects on the environment, African ministers reaffirmed their commitment to protecting the environment, emphasizing the need to find technologies that enable the use of fossil fuels to a minimum. .

In this sense, they appealed to technologically advanced and financially capable countries to give their support to African countries in the fight against the challenges of energy transition.
Angola, South Africa, Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo are part of the APPO.