Total’s power play

Four years ago, in a villa on a bumpy, rust-coloured road in South Sudan’s capital Juba, a manager of the French oil major Total rolled out a map of East Africa and shared a vision for the region’s oil future.

At the time, Total was closing in on gaining exploration rights to unchartered areas of South Sudan. With the South Sudanese government keen on sending any future discoveries through a new pipeline to Kenya – bypassing the only existing pipeline route through its hostile neighbour Sudan – Total saw an opportunity to link the region’s growing oil resources.

East Africa was on the verge of an oil boom. Beginning in 2006, exploration companies discovered 6.5bn barrels of oil along the eastern shore of Lake Albert in Uganda. In 2012, they found another 600m barrels in Kenya’s northwestern Turkana region.

If new oil was found in South Sudan, it could be connected via a regional pipeline to Uganda and Kenya. From there, it would be piped to the Indian Ocean coast for export to international markets. A new centre was developing on the African energy scene, and Total wanted in.

When Total bought Maersk oil last month for $7.5 billion, it took a big step towards realizing its plan for an interconnected East African energy sector. The main motivation was to acquire Maersk Oil’s North Sea assets, but the deal also gave the French oil major rights to the Danish energy firm’s interests in Kenya and Ethiopia.

In a new analysis for the Financial Time’s ‘This is Africa’, DIIS senior researcher Luke Patey explains how Total came to dominate East Africa’s up and coming oil industries. Its economic muscle and growing assets in the region bring into question just how much influence governments have over oil development the region.

Patey heads of the Africa oil and gas programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, University of Oxford, a collaboration providing an in-depth understanding of the economic, political, and security trends shaping Africa’s energy industry.