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Germany should look to Africa for gas, not Russia

2022-05-10T17:46:12.376Z


Germany should look to Africa for gas, not Russia Created: 05/10/2022, 19:27 From: Foreign Policy In order to stop financing Moscow's brutal wars, Berlin should help African countries to expand their energy sectors. This article is available in German for the first time – it was first published in Foreign Policy magazine on March 11, 2022 . After the United States and the United Kingdom banne


Germany should look to Africa for gas, not Russia

Created: 05/10/2022, 19:27

From: Foreign Policy

In order to stop financing Moscow's brutal wars, Berlin should help African countries to expand their energy sectors.

  • This article is available in German for the first time – it was first published in

    Foreign Policy

    magazine on March 11, 2022 .

After the United States and the United Kingdom banned Russian energy exports and the European Union announced plans to cut Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of the year, the West has been discussing how to replace Russian energy supplies.

The most important item is Russian gas, on which Germany and other parts of Europe depend.

From Washington to Berlin, politicians have announced plans to double wind and solar power.

While renewable energy generation will be part of a long-term solution, the notion that it can quickly and massively replace Russian oil and gas is disingenuous at best – and catastrophic at worst for Western economies and consumers.

The reasons for this should be clear to all but those who have no idea about energy: wind and solar power can replace some of the Russian gas used to generate electricity - but only when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, which requires significant reserve capacity, mostly fueled by natural gas.

Moreover, electricity is only part of the energy equation: most of Russia's oil and gas is not consumed in power plants,

but to heat homes, run factories, and fuel cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships—none of which can be easily switched to other fuels.

If Western countries do not want their economies to grind to a halt, oil and gas that has been supplied from Russia will have to be sourced elsewhere.

Europe will therefore need an extensive and reliable supply of non-Russian fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

And any serious debate about energy security must very quickly focus on the question of where future non-Russian supplies are to come from.

For Europe – especially Germany and the other countries most dependent on Russian supplies – part of the answer is that Europe must stop looking east and look south, towards Africa.

Germany is the linchpin.

In recent decades, the various governments in Berlin have pursued policies aimed at maximizing the country's dependence on Russian oil and gas, not least by shutting down all but two of its remaining nuclear reactors.

Gas will probably remain an important source of energy for Germany for years – maybe even decades.

They account for 25 percent of the country's total primary energy consumption, and imports account for 97 percent of the supply.

Russia is the most important source of supply, followed by the Netherlands and Norway.

(Germany itself has significant natural gas reserves that could be tapped through fracking, but Berlin has banned the technology.

Natural gas is cheap and reliable, burns twice as cleanly as coal, and is an important commodity in many sectors, not just power generation.

In Germany in 2020, 44 percent of gas was used for heating buildings, while 28 percent went to industrial processes.

Gas is the best and cheapest raw material for the production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, for which Germany is an important supplier.

(Russia and its ally Belarus are also major fertilizer producers.) Gas is also used in refining, chemical manufacturing and many other industries.

All of this is difficult - if not impossible - to replace with green energy in the foreseeable future.

Germany has already announced that it will further increase the use of coal.

In 2021, coal has overtaken wind power as the primary fuel for electricity production worldwide.

Part of it will be lignite – the worst possible fossil fuel, dirtier than regular coal and mined in huge open-pit mines that dot the German countryside.

But Germany has cornered itself with its energy policy – ​​particularly with replacing nuclear power with Russian gas – and doesn't have many options.

The European Commission has already given absolution to countries that are replacing Russian gas with coal, causing higher emissions.

Germany also needs to be clear about its long-term energy future, including reconsidering its current stance on zero-carbon, non-Russian nuclear power.

Germany will also need significant amounts of natural gas in the foreseeable future.

If Berlin is serious about energy security, it should look to Africa, which has significant natural gas production and reserves, as well as new ones being developed.

Algeria is a major gas producer with significant undeveloped reserves and is already connected to Spain by several undersea pipelines.

Germany and the EU are already working on expanding pipeline capacity between Spain and France, from where more Algerian gas could flow to Germany and other countries.

The Libyan gas fields are connected to Italy by a pipeline.

In both Algeria and Libya, Europe should urgently help develop new fields and increase gas production.

The main focus of the new pipelines currently under discussion is the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline project, which will bring gas from Israel's offshore gas fields to Europe.

However, Africa's largest deposits are south of the Sahara, including Nigeria, which has about a third of the continent's reserves, and Tanzania.

Senegal has recently discovered large offshore fields.

Only a very small part of Africa's gas reserves has been developed so far, neither for domestic consumption nor for export.

Germany should seize these opportunities.

The planned Trans-Saharan Pipeline is to bring gas from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger - and in doing so it will pass through a huge, unmanageable area.

When the project is completed, the new pipeline will connect to the existing Trans-Mediterranean, Maghreb-Europe, Medgaz and Galsi pipelines, which serve Europe from hubs on Algeria's Mediterranean coast.

The Trans-Saharan Pipeline would be more than 4,000 kilometers long and could deliver up to 30 billion cubic meters of Nigerian gas per year to Europe - equivalent to around two-thirds of Germany's imports from Russia in 2021.

Unfortunately, the Trans-Saharan Pipeline will likely take a decade or more to complete and will present many challenges as it passes through areas ravaged by conflict and insurgency.

Still, the project should not be scrapped if Europe takes energy security seriously.

Because the current gas suppliers will probably not be able to fill the gap.

This is illustrated by statements made last week by a group of gas-producing countries that they will not be able to replace Russian gas in Europe.

In contrast, Nigeria is keen to export some of its 200 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves.

Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has called for natural gas to play a key role

A quicker way for Germany to tap into Africa's supplies would be to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) off the West African coast.

Unfortunately, as part of its policy of making Germany dependent on Russian gas, which in turn increases Russia's dependence on Germany, Berlin has not built a single LNG import terminal.

(Last week Berlin announced that it would finally change its policy and build an LNG infrastructure.) LNG loading ports could also be built relatively quickly in Africa.

One example is the Greater Tortue Ahmeyin field, an offshore gas well on the maritime border between Senegal and Mauritania.

The gas is extracted, liquefied, stored and forwarded to LNG tankers, which ship it directly to the importing countries, in floating liquefaction plants above the offshore gas field.

When the field comes online next year, Senegal and Mauritania will become Africa's largest gas producers.

Initial production from this field will be small but is projected to double in a few years and the field is located in a larger natural gas basin with much larger reserves.

Gas production is also expanding elsewhere in Africa, as projects in Tanzania, Mozambique and other countries start up in the next few years.

Germany could kill two birds with one stone: it could stop funding Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal wars and instead support Africa's economic development and integration.

So far, part of Germany's epic energy myopia has been believing that development is possible without the conventional energy sector.

Indeed, European officials at the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions have done the opposite - they have campaigned to cut off financing for natural gas projects in developing countries.

Their hypocritical argument is that developing countries must decarbonize immediately,

while they themselves ramp up production of coal and other fossil fuels and otherwise enjoy an energy-intensive rich-world lifestyle.

This is all the more absurd when you consider that sub-Saharan Africa currently accounts for just 4 percent of global carbon emissions and will remain energy poor for decades to come - in fact, in countries like Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, the average person uses less energy per year than one american fridge.

Funding natural gas development in Africa will not only spur much-needed economic growth, but also support Europe's efforts to diversify away from Russia.

that sub-Saharan Africa currently accounts for just 4 percent of global carbon emissions and will remain energy poor for decades to come - in fact, in countries like Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, the average person uses less energy per year than a single American refrigerator.

Funding natural gas development in Africa will not only spur much-needed economic growth, but also support Europe's efforts to diversify away from Russia.

that sub-Saharan Africa currently accounts for just 4 percent of global carbon emissions and will remain energy poor for decades to come - in fact, in countries like Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, the average person uses less energy per year than a single American refrigerator.

Funding natural gas development in Africa will not only spur much-needed economic growth, but also support Europe's efforts to diversify away from Russia.

For Germany and the rest of Europe, there is no way around sourcing significantly more gas from Africa while helping African countries achieve their own development goals.

If anything, it's a litmus test of how serious these countries are in this new era of energy insecurity.

By Vijaya Ramachandran 

Vijaya Ramachandran

 is Director of Energy and Development at the Breakthrough Institute.

Twitter: @vijramachandran

This article was first published in English in the magazine "ForeignPolicy.com" on March 11, 2022 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.

*Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.

Foreign Policy Logo © ForeignPolicy.com

Source: merkur

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