In a bid to secure its energy needs for the future, India is trying to increase its engagement with Africa in the field of hydrocarbons. During the upcoming 4th India Africa Hydrocarbon Conference (IAHC) to be held in New Delhi on January 21-22, India is looking at diversifying towards new oil sources to get cheaper and long term supplies while building on its own hydrocarbon assets in the African region.
Being the third largest importer of oil in the world, India imports close to 75 per cent of its crude oil requirements of which two-thirds come from Africa. It is expected that by 2030 India’s crude oil imports will be close to 90 per cent. In the recent surveys, several African nations have been found to be rich in hydrocarbon resources and the countries where reserves have been discovered have gone up from seven in 1990 to 25 at present.
India is also a major exporter of refined petroleum products and nearly one-third of this goes to Africa. Hence, Africa is the second largest destination of Indian petroleum exports.
According to official sources, energy security stands as one of the major focus areas of the bilateral ties between India and Africa. African imports play a significant role in meeting the demands of India to an extent that Nigeria stood as the second largest supplier of oil to India in June, 2015 after Saudi Arabia. Angola is another big market for India.
“This would enable India to enhance its energy security while nurturing Africa’s Hydrocarbon’s sector growth on several fronts like capacity building, environmental sustainability, human resource development and employment generation,” official sources said.
New Delhi’s strategy aims to put together African energy needs with Indian strengths in this regard and knowledge exchange and transfer are expected to remain the key elements in tie-ups.
“There is also immense potential for structural complementarities and business tie ups in the hydrocarbon sector…This opens avenues to explore for more opportunities for equity investment in the African markets and two way tie ups. India has proven its expertise in exploration, refining, consultancy, training, infrastructural development in hydrocarbon,” the sources added.
The IAHC will see participation from 22 African nations out of which nine — Algeria, Morocco, Mauritius, liberia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia, Senegal and Equat-orial Guinea — will be represented by their Ministers.