Africa
by Shem Oirere
Africa Correspondent
Africa’s pipeline coatings market is poised for a major take off after significant discoveries of oil and
gas reserves and increased expenditure in
water infrastructure expansion particularly in Southern Africa.
Africa’s liquefied natural gas sector is headed for a major boom if
the already unveiled upstream and
downstream development plans by
Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique,
Tanzania, Angola, Ghana and Nigeria
are anything to go by.
Discoveries and downstream developments in these countries have been
huge with the U.S. Energy Information
Administration saying Equatorial Guinea,
Mozambique and Nigeria were the only
natural gas exporters in sub-Saharan
Africa in 2011 at 1. 22 trillion cubic feet
with Angola becoming the latest entrant
in 2013.
The discoveries in Mozambique,
Tanzania and additional capacities in
countries such as Nigeria, Angola and
Equatorial Guinea are set to catalyze
infrastructure growth in the remote offshore areas where trillions of cubic feet
have been discovered. Several kilometers
of pipe and volumes of coatings are set to
be used to connect the gas fields to export
terminals and refineries.
Mozambique’s offshore LNG discoveries are estimated at 110 trillion cubic feet (tcf) with U.S.-based Anadarko
Petroleum and Italy’s integrated energy
company Eni projecting more findings
in their acreage of Rovuma Area 1 and
Rovuma Area 4 respectively.
Mozambique’s offshore acreage
has become lucrative with foreign gas
explorers scrambling for a share as
was seen last year during a tight com-
petition between Shell and Thailand
national oil company PTT Exploration
and Production for an 8. 5 percent Cove
Energy interest in Anadarko’s Rovuma
Area 1. The country is also developing
four liquefaction trains with five million
metric tons per annum each.
These developments appear to be in
line with previous predictions by global
downstream petrochemical special-
ist AMI Consulting, which forecast a
growth in both production and use of gas
reserves in the region, hence creating de-
mand for pipelines and related segments
such as coatings.
“Pipelines are playing an important
role in this change: they are needed not
just to gather, transport and distribute the
gas, but also to connect LNG import and
export terminals, which are mushroom-
ing around the globe,” AMI said in its
third edition Steel Pipe Coating market
report published last year. “Steel pipe
coating is likely to be among the top ben-
eficiaries: as new pipelines tend to oper-
ate under harsher conditions in terms of
temperature, pressure and external envi-
ronment, coating is becoming more de-
manding, more sophisticated and hence
more valuable.”
Mozambique has launched a feasi-
bility study for the construction of a
$5 billion 2,600- kilometer natural gas
pipeline to connect natural gas fields
in the country to neighboring South
Africa’s Oil, Gas and Water Sectors
Fuel Demand for Pipeline Coatings
