From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Concerted efforts are needed to solve Africa’s energy poverty as a prelude to playing on the global renewable energy stage, according to the Dr Bryant Orjiako, the chairman and co-founder of Seplat Plc, a Nigerian independent oil and gas company listed on the London and Nigerian Stock Exchanges.
Orjiako made the remarks at the 2021 edition of the Seplat Energy Summit in Abuja.
According to him, ‘there is a global consensus on what has to be done regarding climate change and the consensus is that something must be done by everyone with respect to decarbonisation.’
He added that energy transition from the African perspective is all about balancing the very severe energy poverty in Nigeria and Africa with the provision of the right energy mix that will provide the solution.
‘Just to contextualise this, in Africa today, we have the largest population of people who are in darkness. Therefore, it is going to be a paradox of sorts if we focus on just reducing carbon emissions and then jettison all the operations that we have.
‘From the Seplat perspective in providing these solutions, we are focusing on a number of things and number one is to change the way we do things.
‘We have identified gas as the real transition fuel and for that reason Seplat today delivers 30 per cent gas needs. We are very aligned to the Federal Government’s initiative in this regard and we can only see this increasing.
‘We have decided to stop gas flare emissions from our areas of operations, six years before the deadline,’ Orjiako said.