Asian Oil Companies, IOCs , Join Traditional Supermajors In East Africa

 

The future for East Africa’s oil and gas industry is bright. One leading indicator is that the exploration and development of the oil and gas sector have become powerful magnets for increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region over the last 12 years with the addition of Asian NOCs and smaller independents oil companies are scrambling for solid ground in East Africa’s oil and gas sector.

Some years back, European major oil companies such as France’s Total, Royal Dutch Shell, US supermajor ExxonMobil,  Singapore’s Pavilion Energy and UK-based firm Ophir Energy were the ones dominating the East African oil and gas industry and exploring oil and gas resources.

However, in recent years, many Asian companies  including NOCs from China (CNPC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation [CNOOC], the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation have been joined large oil companies of the world.

Also these smaller players which are from Europe such as Tullow Oil, France’s Maurel et Prom and the U.S. firms, Anadarko, Australia’s Swala energy and London based firm Aminex are important because their business operations are focused solely on exploration and producing oil and gas resource whilst those big boys dabble into everything: from discovering, developing, extracting, refining, transporting to marketing oil and gas-related products.

Smaller independent oil companies also have high-risk tolerance in contrast to major oil firms, which may shift investment to the downstream sub-sector of the oil and gas industry in the period of lower oil price.
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Sometimes, they move to other oil-producing countries and leave the gas fields to small independents oil companies.