Today we had the pleasure of connecting with NJ Ayuk for an Africa-focused energy discussion. NJ is the founder and CEO of Centurion Law Group, a Johannesburg-based energy-focused law firm, and the author of "Billions at Play: The Future of African Energy and Doing Deals." In this capacity, he is among the leading energy dealmakers on the African continent. He is also the Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the continent's full potential across all energy verticals. We are always interested in learning more about energy development in the developing world and can't thank NJ enough for sharing his time, expertise, and passion, based on the unique mix of his commercial and philanthropic endeavors.  

Our discussion is timely: NJ has just returned from the African Energy Week conference in Cape Town. In our conversation with NJ, we cover the intelligence he gathered at that event and the insights he took away from it. We then discuss his observations on commercial investment and “bankable projects” in Africa, and his views on energy trends over the next 3 to 5 years. He provides his pregame for COP 27 in Egypt and explains why he expects to see a “united Africa” negotiating position in favor of hydrocarbons that may surprise some observers. We somehow found the time to talk about the potential for pan-African integration of supply chains for power generation and home cooking fuels (piped gas long run vs. cannister LPG short run), the critical need for expanding education resources in Africa and how electricity advances that important social good, and NJ’s vision for energy in Africa ten years from now. 

In his vision of the future, NJ remarks that he hopes more people will realize that “climate change and energy poverty are two sides of the same coin." It struck us as a profound comment we should all be considering.  

Mike Bradley started us off with a discussion of global markets and touched on crude oil, earnings, the next Fed rate hike, and implications of the latest power games at the highest political levels in China. Colin Fenton connected the dots on why Waha Hub gas basis prices in the United States dropped below zero today because of events in Europe and explained why "100% natural gas storage utilization" means something entirely different in France than in the United Kingdom, with important implications on why gas storage may soon not be "at 94%" in the EU or Waha basis at "subzero prices."  

We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did! Our best to you all.