Eni is going to invest €20bln in Africa in the next four years

Italy’s Eni plans to invest about 20 billion euros ($22.5 billion) in Africa over the next fours, mostly in oil and gas, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi said, that is said to represent about 60% of the total investments Eni will do in the same years.
Eni has made major gas discoveries especially in Mozambique and recently in Egypt that have increased its reserves, with more than 12 billion barrels of discoveries in the last 7 years, mostly in Africa. Descalzi said despite these discoveries, abundant energy potential and Africa’s steady economic growth, access to energy on the continent remained poor. Africa’s energy mix has remained unchanged over the past 10 years and is unsustainable, with biomass for cooking still the main source, Descalzi said.
Currently hydro power produces only 1 percent of electricity and renewables contribute just about 0.3 percent although there is a huge renewables potentials that is unexploited. Descalzi said Africa’s solar power potential was about 300,000 gigawatts (GW), wind about 7,000 GW, hydro about 283 GW and geothermal about 15 GW. He added that the continent held about 7 percent of worldwide gas reserves.
Eni has said it was ready to spend “hundreds of millions” of euros in developing solar power projects in Africa. Descalzi also said on Friday that the company was focused on starting production at its giant offshore Zohr gas field in Egypt by end-2017, which once started, will give Egypt 100 percent energy security.