Canadian oil firm plans Kenya carbon offset deal
Ngamia 3 oil exploration site in Nakukulas village, Turkana on July 13, 2014.
Canadian oil firm Africa Oil Corp has said it will build two projects in Kenya to help offset carbon emissions from its oil drilling operations in other countries and also create a new revenue stream.
The company has not disclosed the exact nature of the projects, but carbon-heavy firms are currently racing to invest in green projects such as solar, hydropower, and geothermal to help offset their emissions.
Africa Oil in 2021 revealed its intention to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025 but reckons that investments in carbon offset projects could provide a pathway for the company to diversify its revenues amid an increased push towards renewables.
“Markets for new products and services may present opportunities for the company to expand or diversify the company’s lines of business, helping to grow or at least offset potential losses of revenue associated with our traditional business activities as demand for oil and gas declines or even grow revenue,” said the firm.
“For instance, we are exploring the development of an offset project in Kenya of sufficient scale to help mitigate both our own emissions as well as potentially third-party emissions,” said the firm in its half-year results for 2023.
Africa Oil Corp says its preference is to invest directly in nature-based carbon removal projects to develop a dedicated source of emissions offsets, where the company has full transparency into and control over the project quality.
“Towards that end, the company has started work to identify and develop two high-quality emissions offset projects in Kenya that also deliver social and environmental benefits,” it said.
Africa Oil has also indicated that it could go to the market to buy existing carbon credits over-the-counter given that some of its carbon offset projects may not progress fast enough or deliver the volume of credits that it requires.
As the global carbon trading heats up, Kenya is also moving with the tide, and last month President William Ruto signed into law the Climate Change (Amendment) Bill, 2023, setting the stage for the regulation of the carbon market.
In May, Africa Oil and Total Energies announced that they had sold their stakes in blocks 10BA, 10BB, and 13T in the South Lokichar Basin in Turkana.
