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The African Energy Chamber (AEC), a business network of the continent's energy sector, released a press statement on Monday detailing 10 developments that will shape Africa’s energy sector in 2019. According to AEC, the new year presents new sets of dynamics and challenges that will influence the future of the industry, from presidential elections to megaproject developments, amidst intensifying international competition.

The Johannesburg-based AEC also mentioned new frontiers that are opening up in the continent's energy market as one of the expected developments in 2019. This year is also expected to confirm Africa as a global exploration hotspot. In 2019, AEC said OPEC is going to face a complex energy diplomacy dilemma in Africa as the continent is home to a flurry of upcoming petroleum producers, while OPEC members like Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Angola and Congo-Brazzaville are striving to boost their domestic output, a situation that will make it harder and harder for the oil cartel to negotiate its production cuts.

Angola's ongoing reforms, Sudanese rapprochement and the potential for new entrants from East Africa are also major developments expected on the African energy scene in 2019. The energy sector will also see new entrants in the Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) industry even as other FLNG projects on the continent experience struggles.   

Africa’s biggest petroleum producer, Nigeria, will be moving forward with massive oil development projects in 2019. Following the launch last year of Total’s $3.3 billion Egina Floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) in Nigeria, production has officially started in the early days of 2019. The project is set to peak at 200,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd). According to AEC, Final Investment Decision (FID) is now expected on Shell’s Bonga Southwest offshore field in Nigeria early this year. Its production is expected to reach 180,000 bopd.

Nigeria is also expected to launch landmark bidding rounds this year. Among these are the auctioning of the country’s gas flare sites under the Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme, likely to happen after the February general election. These rounds will also assess investors’ interest for the country's business environment.

The upcoming Nigerian presidential election, set for February 16th, is also of considerable interest to the African and international community in terms of how the election might impact the rest of the continent given that Nigeria is not only Africa’s biggest oil and gas producer, but also the largest economy on the continent.

Angolan President João Lourenço, who took office in September 2018, has been implementing reforms that are drastically transforming the governance of the country’s oil and gas sector. On the back of these reforms, Total and BP signed major agreements to boost their Angolan operations over the past few months. However, the real impact of those reforms is expected to be seen and tested in 2019. The second largest oil producer in Africa is backing up an international conference being organized by Africa Oil & Power in Luanda on June 4-6, 2019, where it will be launching the Angolan Marginal Field Bidding Round.

Ghana is holding its first formal licensing round set to close in May 2019. The round has reportedly got the attention of 16 oil companies, including majors ExxonMobil, BP, Total and ENI, according to the business network for the African energy sector.

Gabon, an OPEC member, and Congo-Brazzaville – which joined the cartel in June 2018 – each has ongoing bidding rounds. Gabon’s 12th shallow and deep-water licensing round is set to close in April 2019 and Congo-Brazzaville’s License round phase II in June 2019.  

Senegal, a new entrant in Africa's hydrocarbons sector, is making advances towards the development of its own FLNG industry. FLNG systems are facilities that deal with the offshore storage, processing and transport of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). On December 21st last year, BP announced the agreement of the FID for Phase 1 of the cross-border Greater Tortue Ahmeyim development between Senegal and Mauritania, which involves the installation of a 2.5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) FLNG facility. It became the third African FLNG project to reach FID after Cameroon’s 2.4 MTPA Hilli Episeyo and Mozambique’s 3.4 MTPA Coral South FLNG.

According to BP, the project is expected to produce gas from an ultra-deepwater subsea system and mid-water floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which will process the gas, removing heavier hydrocarbon components and transporting the gas to an FLNG facility located on the Mauritania and Senegal maritime border. The FLNG facility is designed to provide circa 2.5 million tonnes of LNG per annum on average, with the total gas resources in the field estimated to be around 15 trillion cubic feet (Tcf).

The development of Equatorial Guinea’s $2 billion Fortuna FLNG project stalled due to a lack of financing. 2019 is expected to provide clarity on whether the country can find the right partners to put the project back on Africa’s FLNG map.

Mozambique also has a mega gas project putting the Southern African nation on the global LNG map. Following the launch of the Coral South FLNG project by ENI in June 2017, AEC said an FID is now expected in the coming months for the Anardarko-led Mozambique LNG project, an onshore LNG development initially consisting of two LNG trains totaling 12.88MTPA to export the gas extracted from the offshore Area 1, estimated to contain a whooping 75Tcf.

Another country mentioned in the AEC report is Madagascar, which does not have any major oil discovery to date, but has an ongoing licence round to last until May 2019. In Kenya, the South Lokichar Basin is being opened up by Tullow Oil. Uganda is set to join the club of African petroleum producers by the early 2020s. Efforts are on the way in the East African country to develop adequate infrastructure for the evacuation of oil that will be produced from the Lake Albert Basin.

In North Africa, Algeria and Libya have also entered an election year in 2019. Libyan general election is set for the first half of the year, and Algeria’s is for April. Libyan authorities plan to more than double the country’s output to 2.1 million bopd by 2021.

Algeria's national oil company, Sonatrach, has launched an ambitious transformation strategy that will see it investing $56 billion over the next four years and internationalize its operations across major global energy markets. AEC said 2019 could even see the state-owned giant and Africa’s biggest company further expand south of the Sahara.