The Market Engagement Manager at S&P Global Platts John Laurent-Tronche has explained that Africa is slowly finding it’s way as one of the petroleum producers of the world by taking advantage of its consumption deficit to make productions.

While contributing to discussions at the ongoing Ghana International Petroleum Conference via Zoom, Laurent-Tronche said studies show that Africa is likely to be a giant petroleum producer in some few years.

“Africa’s oil demand is definitely narrowing its deficit to supply across Africa. You have 67 million barrels per day of oil production, [and] a lot of these come from Nigeria, Algeria Egypt, Angola and many other countries...we are definitely seeing that oil demand across Africa is rising at a faster rate than it is rising elsewhere in the world. But there is still kind of a deficit in what Africa producers and what Africa actually consumes in the world of oil,” he said.

He also indicated that “Africa’s refinery capacity is about less than a half of what it actually produces, so the majority of the oil that is produced in Africa has to go elsewhere to be refined. Dangote is one of Africa’s refinery that is going to be consumed in African Crude and feedstock. Dangote is just one of the many examples and its obviously the largest, but there are many other kinds of medium-size and small refineries that are effectively doing the same thing Dangote will do.”

The Ghana International Petroleum Conference (GhIPCON) is Ghana’s foremost Petroleum Downstream Conference where policymakers, industry operatives and experts converge to deliberate on issues of policy and operations as well as share ideas and experiences.