African oil production capacity will continue to grow at a significant rate in the medium-term and production capacity is anticipated to reach 7,4-million barrels a day by 2014, an analyst said on Wednesday.

International Energy Agency senior oil demand analyst Eduardo Lopez told delegates attending the Oil and Gas Africa conference in Cape Town that African production capacity was expected to rise by almost 70% from the 4,4-million barrels a day produced in 2000.

While Algeria and Angola accounted for roughly one-third each of current output, Lopez believed that Angola would account for 54% of Africa's total oil production by 2014, followed by Algeria and Egypt at 11% and 10%, respectively.

PetroSA's proposed 400 000-bl/d Coega crude oil refinery would also increase Africa's production capacity in the long-term, although Lopez would not comment on the fundamentals or future success of the proposed project.

In terms of global oil production, Lopez also noted that Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries' (Opec's) crude production capacity was projected to increase by 2,8-million bbl/d to 36,9-million barrels a day by 2014. The mainstay of this growth remained Saudi Arabia, where capacity was set to increase to 12-million barrels a day this year.

Non-Opec oil supply was project to grow by 0,7-million barrels a day on average between 2008 and 2014.

OIL DEMAND

The total African oil product demand was estimated at 3,2-million barrels a day in 2008, which was only 3,7% of global demand.

Lopez continued that African oil demand was expected to increase by 2,3% on a year-on-year average to 3,77-million barrels a day by 2014.

South Africa and Egypt were the largest oil consumers in Africa, accounting for 40% of the total demand. They were followed by Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Nigeria, which collectively accounted for 32% of total demand.

It was noted that Africa's oil demand per capita was the lowest in the world and was unlikely to rise significantly in the medium-term because Africa, as a whole, did not have a thriving manufacturing sector to boost energy demand and its per capita income was still the lowest in the world.

African oil demand, which on a per capita basis is the lowest in the world, would not sustain the growing production rate, but it is believed that China's demand for energy would encourage oil production growth in Africa.

Addressing delegates at the conference on Tuesday, Frontier Advisory CEO Dr Martyn Davies said that there was a new growth coupling between Africa and China.

China was courting Africa quite significantly to gain access to the continent's vast natural resources, particularly oil.

Davies added that China was becoming increasingly dependent on Africa for natural commodities. This was particularly evident by the fact that one-million barrels of crude oil was exported by African producers to China every day.

China was expected to account for roughly one-third of global demand growth by 2014.

The total global oil demand was anticipated to reach 91-million bl/d by 2014, mainly driven by Asia and not from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

In 2014, for the first time in history the demand from emerging countries would surpass the OECD, said Lopez.