INVESTMENT WATCH- ExxonMobil is eyeing expansion opportunities in Africa, now that oil prices are on the rise again, according to the Africa Report. “The company wants to reinvest in Africa, partly to compete against Eni and Total and to not leave them to dominate the continent,” says OCP Policy Center research associate Francis Perrin. “ExxonMobil looks at everything and everywhere, from Egypt to Mauritania through South Africa, but that doesn’t mean it will buy all the blocks it is studying or start producing from all the fields it is exploring.”

Egypt may be a good choice for Exxon, where it’s already eyeing opportunities in the East Mediterranean. “The foray into Egypt’s offshore oil and gas it is currently considering can be linked to a desire to combine recent gas discoveries in Cyprus with new Egyptian fields and also to find business opportunities for its gas in the highly populated – close to 100 mn people – and top energy-consuming country in the region,” Wood Mackenzie’s upstream Egypt analyst Stephen Fullerton. Egypt is close to finalizing an agreement with Cyprus to build a USD 800 mn to USD 1 bn gas pipeline that should see Egypt begin exporting LNG to Europe, moving one step closer to achieving its goal of becoming a regional hub.