Equatorial Guinea: Be Project Partners Not Service Providers—Ondo Tells Russian Companies

Equatorial Guinean Minister for Mines and Hydrocarbons, H.E Antonio Oburu Ondo has called on Russian companies that want to do business in the oil and gas sector in Africa to be project partners instead of being service contractors.

He noted that funding for oil and gas projects is one of the major challenges in Africa and, therefore, wants Russian companies that want to do exploration in Africa to invest in seismic data acquisition and be partners of the project themselves.

Contributing to the discussion on ‘Exploration and Mining: Russian Technologies in Africa’ at the just-ended Second Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg Russia, H.E. Ondo noted that Russia is very good when it comes to technology but questioned whether their technology is affordable to Africa NOC and government.

To address the issue of technological affordability, H.E Antonio Ondo stressed that Russian companies need to put the right commercial structure in place to make their technology affordable to Africa while becoming profitable to them.

“We are interested in a commercial framework in which the Russian side would not be a service company, but, rather, a partner. If a Russian company invests in a project and the results are shared, this will allow a considerably larger number of countries to use the technology,” Ondo said.

“If we have this commercial term that allows the company to come and put in money and amortize the fund they invested, I think this is the best,” he told energynewafrica.com on the sidelines of Second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg.

Ondo stressed that Equatorial Guinea is very interested in expanding cooperation with Russia and Russian companies in the mining and oil and gas industries, as well as in mapping and exploration.

“I would like to sit down at a round table with you and other representatives of mining companies, and not only talk about the extraction of mineral resources but also about the extraction of oil and gas,” Ondo said.

Source: https://energynewsafrica.com