Okay, you mentioned that

African crude oil from Nigeria, from Algeria and so

on is being displaced from the United States because the United States are no
longer importing from these countries, what's happening with it, what are the
consequences
on African economy? I think limited consequences
and we have to look into detail but clearly,
very recently, the exports of Nigerian oil and probably Angolan oil to the US have
fallen
to nearly zero. All this oil probably is
coming to China and India. Even if you have a slow
down in the consumption, reduced increase in the demand for oil in these countries,
they still need
large quantities of oil. There's also always
what they say, it's an older story. I don't know who said
that but if you want to put China on four wheels, you need five planets. The
calculation is simple. You have something like 500, 600, 700 cars in the US for
1,000 inhabitants. In China, even with a huge
recent development of this, you have probably between
50 and 60 or 70 cars for 1,000 inhabitants, assuming that
the Chinese they have the same number of cars as in the US compared
to the population, they will use the same amount
of oil per inhabitant, and if US inhabitant
is using something like three tons of
oil every year. So if the Chinese are using
the same three tons of oil, there are 1.3 billion
inhabitants and you come to the total
oil consumption of the world and in fact
China of course this is a big country that is only
one fifth of the population. So if we want to put the Chinese on four wheels, we
need five planets. It's a bit stupid, but
it gives you a taste of the huge potential increase
in the demand for oil. Fortunately, we have by a limitation of
the number of gas, we have have probably
decreased in the unit consumption of
gasoline or diesel by the gas, at anywhere
the potential is huge. In Africa, there have recently been
some major discoveries. It's considered a very promising continent for the
future of oil and gas, right? Yes. Something which is very important is that
probably 60 percent of the oil and gas discoveries over the last years
were made in Africa, which is very impressive
when you know that in fact Africa is about a bit less than eight
or nine percent of the total oil reserves, gas reserves, oil
consumption, gas consumption. Especially gas is limited simply not because there
is no need for gas, but because it's relatively
complex to distribute gas, it's costly and you
have a population with a very low purchasing power. So it's clear that
typically, today, before the recent discoveries, Africa was a good country
for oil and gas but limited. Especially you have
a fair production in Africa in Libya with older barrels in Libya
these days and also a fair production in
Angola and Nigeria. But in total,
West Africa to take it is something in the range of five to six million barrels a
day production compared to
the 90 million barrels a day total oil production in the oil, so
relatively limited. We had recently, it's
a big event for me, it's a huge discoveries of gas in Mozambique and Tanzania
and it's huge. We could expect
that in the future, the production of LNG, liquified natural gas
because I will have to go to LNG
since you could use limited quantities
in the country and the South Africa which will be a good thing for South Africa.
But basically that will make LNG and the potential for LNG is the same as the
potential for LNG in Qatar which is
80 million tons a year. Of course when you
compare these two, the total consumption
of oil and gas is limited but it's huge from
the point of view of LNG. Probably the total production of LNG these days is in the
range of 250 to 300 million tons
a year normal. So this is something back in- This is very important. For gas, yes
this is absolutely
huge and you ever saw potential for Shale gas in
Algeria, in South Africa. You have a lot of discussions, very different discussion
by the way in Algeria
and South Africa. But you have a huge potential for Shale gas we then develop
shale gas and crude oil. Regarding crude oil I would
be much more careful. You had some discoveries,
that's clear. Countries like Ghana,
Ghana is producing now. Uganda and Kenya partly
will produce in the future. We have some discoveries
from time to time. But typically, let's take
the example of Ghana. Ghana is producing
100,000 barrels a day, which is a bit more than 1,000
of the world production. So it's good for the country, it's good for the region but
it's relatively limited. So limited to
new discoveries for oil, but huge discoveries for gas. The Chinese companies are
especially active in
Africa, aren't they? They are, yes. Of course, you can find a long discussion
very recently about this. You have three big Chinese
company especially two, CNPC ;China National Petroleum Corporation and SINOPEC
which at the beginning was a petrol chemical
company but now it's become a so fair oil company. They are very active
everywhere because the situation in
China and China is a situation of France
in 1920, Italy in 1945. We always remember the story
of Mr. Gray Commenti. I like it very much. The Seven Sisters etc. But let us coming
back to China. In fact, these companies
are doing the same as [inaudible] at the time was doing for Italy go abroad to take
crude oil and to bring
it back to the country where you have
very limited production but they were successful
in Iran and Russia. So CNPC is explicit and the SINOPEC also is
very active in Africa. One of the reason
is simply that if you want to go
abroad to find oil, you should take into account the fact that in
some countries in fact some of the companies in
these countries are closed to the international companies
whether they are private or national
companies from China. Countries like most
of the Gulf is closed even Russia
de facto is more or less close to the company
so they are going to Africa where they can find
some fair quantities of oil. They were producing
most of the oil in Sudan as they are
very active also in Chad and in Nigeria where they found some fair
quantities but problem is the relationship between
the Chinese companies and local governments which are sometimes a bit difficult but
it's clear that they are
very active in this region Well, thank you very much. We have touched
many points that we have discussed in our lectures
and I think this will help us understand
the situation very well.