Chapter 894 Energy Pattern
East Africa is actually the country with the largest natural gas reserves in Africa, but this is also easy to understand. East Africa’s land accounts for about 43% of the entire continent of Africa. If according to In the past life of African countries, Nigeria ranked first. Compared with the current land area of East Africa and Nigeria, which is only more than 900,000 square kilometers, it is really bullying.
However, this also shows that the conditions of Nigeria were the best in Africa in the previous life. The three major energy sources of coal, natural gas and oil were at the forefront in Africa. Other resources are also very rich, plus arable land. It is vast and has no shortage of excellent ports. It is not difficult to understand that it has developed into Africa's largest economy in its previous life.
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The first town.
"According to the telegram from Bujumbura, our country's first natural gas plant has been successfully put into operation. This is great news for our country's energy security pattern." Von der Leyen said to Ernst with a smile on her face. Report to other officials.
There is no way around this. Since the discovery of oil in Lake Turkana, oil exploration work in various parts of East Africa has not gone smoothly. Only a few small oil fields have been discovered. Instead, natural gas was discovered during oil exploration. There are many resources, including sizable natural gas fields discovered in the central and eastern parts of the country.
Of course, according to the layout of East African oil, the current exploration work will naturally not go smoothly, because the oil in East Africa is mainly distributed in the north and west, and the development of these two areas in East Africa has weakened, and many areas have inconvenient transportation. Sparsely populated and unadvanced equipment, the exploration work affected by these combined factors will naturally not go smoothly.
There is no need to worry too much about this. After all, Ernst knows the overall distribution of oil in East Africa, but there is no need to rush to large-scale development in East Africa.
The current oil production in Turkana Oil City, plus imports, can basically meet domestic needs. East Africa’s oil self-sufficiency rate remains at about 20%. If there is an emergency, it is completely possible. Increase the production capacity of Turkana Oil City in a short period of time to meet the oil demand across East Africa. After all, the current demand for oil in countries around the world is not too high.
"Energy exploration is a long and complex process. East Africa has a huge land area and many resources have not been discovered. And with the advancement of technology, many resources that cannot be used today may gain utilization value in the future," Ernst said. .
“Last year, we imported three million tons of oil from abroad, of which Tsarist Russia accounted for about 35% of the Baku oil field in the Caspian Sea, Romania accounted for about 30%, and Austria-Hungary accounted for about 30%. The empire accounts for about 15%, and the rest comes from the United States and other countries. In the field of oil consumption, our country ranks at least in the world. The top three in the world.”
The oil consumption of one country in East Africa last year was close to 4 million tons, while the current world oil production is only more than 10 million tons, less than 20 million tons, and East Africa Local production has not yet exceeded one million tons. From the oil import data, we can also see East Africa's advanced layout in the petroleum industry.
At present, East Africa, or the Hechingen Consortium, has strategic deployments in Romania and Tsarist Russia, and has invested and constructed a large number of oil wells there, especially in Romania, which can account for 100% of the oil imported from East Africa. The main reason is that the Hechingen Consortium controls a certain share of oil extraction. Although Romania is rich in oil resources, it is far less than Tsarist Russia’s Baku Oil Field. Its production capacity is close to 1% of the world’s Around forty.
“A large amount of oil is imported, which costs a lot of money every year. In my country’s energy use, as a source of power, the proportion is higher than that of other countries. This is mainly due to the scale of my country’s automobile industry and internal combustion engine field. It is higher than other countries. As for the chemical industry, it is lower than that of European and American countries. ”
The application of internal combustion engines in European and American countries is actually weaker than that in East Africa, because European and American countries themselves have the foundation of the first industrial revolution, and steam engines still have broad application space.
In short, it is the old industry of steam engines that has hindered the development of the internal combustion engine industry in Europe and the United States, especially in the fields of factories and fuel. Among the two main energy options of coal and oil, East Africa is significantly more Favor oil.
Of course, East Africa now has a third option, which is natural gas. However, compared with oil and coal, natural gas is not conducive to storage and transportation, so the initial investment and operating costs are higher. Just like the natural gas power station in Bujumbura, which is equipped with a dedicated natural gas transportation pipeline, it is simply impossible to achieve this by simply producing specialized storage containers.
Petroleum only needs to be packed in barrels and does not require high air tightness. As for coal, it is even simpler. It is a solid fuel and does not require the production of special containers at all. transportation.
"Now, the main reason for relying on oil imports is that our country's oil resources are not rich, and most of them are located in inland areas, so the cost of extraction is relatively high. Unlike the oil from Romania and Tsarist Russia, it can be directly loaded on ships and shipped away. For this reason, we The Turkana Railway was specially built.”
The two main purposes of the Turkana Railway at that time were border trade with the Abyssinian Empire and the transport of Turkana oil. Southern Transport.
“So the development and utilization of natural gas is of great significance to our country’s economic and energy development. In the future, our country will make more efforts in the field of natural gas popularization, including natural gas power generation, residential fuel, and the chemical industry, which all have certain needs. ”
Everyone agrees with the application of natural gas in power generation and chemical industry, but when it comes to residential fuel, many people twitch their mouths.
Although we have seen the physical objects and usage demonstrations of gas stoves and gas tanks, everyone still has some psychological barriers to the ability to accept natural gas.
After all, if an accident happened to that thing, it would be no different from a bomb. It would be no problem to reimburse a kitchen for one tank of gas, and not to mention explosion, just a leak would be extremely dangerous.
Ernst naturally noticed the wonderful expressions on the faces of the East African officials, but natural gas, after using it, would only say that it smelled really good.
As a clean energy source, it does not produce a lot of smoke when burned like other fuels except electricity, and it occupies a small space. One tank of natural gas can burn for a long time. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages, especially the experience It feels better than other energy sources.
In addition to natural gas, the application of electricity in East African kitchens has also appeared. For example, rice cookers, an artifact, have been popularized in a certain number of East African urban households. They are very convenient for steaming rice and making porridge. Apart from rice cookers, the most commonly used appliance in East African kitchens is the kettle.
“Natural gas does have certain safety hazards, but it is more of a psychological effect. Some people think that gas tanks are very risky, but more than a hundred years have passed since the British invented the gas tank. Before the invention, the lighting system at that time used a large number of gas tanks to store natural gas for use in gas lamps, so as long as the process standards were strictly followed and the products were produced according to standard processes, there was no need to worry about safety performance," Ernst said.
Of course, that being said, whether you can rest assured or not is another matter, but based on past experience, as long as it is popularized, there will basically be no big problems in the future.
“In the national energy landscape, the four major categories of oil, electricity, coal, and natural gas are the key promotion targets in East Africa in the future. Although we have no shortage of coal, the utilization rate is too low. We must know the quality of East Africa’s coal. They are the best in the world, so we must continue to improve and improve our craftsmanship and technology.”
(End of this chapter)