Cameroon’s total oil deposits were estimated at 30 million metric tonnes in 2007 with studies further revealing that maintaining the annual average production of 4 million metric tonnes would lead to the end of oil production within seven years if new deposits were not found or put into operation. A confirmation of this came with the drop of oil production by 12,9 per cent between 2008 and 2009.
This information was just part of the whole lot of data on the energy sector that was contained in the 4th Annual Report published by the Energy Information Systems project, SIE-Cameroun, during a seminar that held in Yaounde yesterday, 16 March. Presenting the report to seminar participants, the coordinator of the SIE-Cameroun project, Sylvain Defo Wafo said the country’s natural gas resources were estimated at 186 billion cubic metres while Cameroon still presented huge potentials in hydropower estimated at 20 gigawatts. “To this day only 5 per cent of this potential is used,” he said, equally mentioning that Cameroon’s resources in renewable energy is huge with the second forest potential in the Congo basin after the Democratic Republic of Congo. Concerning the three forms of energy production in Cameroon, biomass energy ranked first at 51 per cent, petroleum products account for 45 per cent while electricity ranks third accounting for just 4 per cent of the total energy production estimated in 2009 at 9,016 kilo tonnes of oil equivalent. Sylvain Defo Wafo said Cameroon’s electricity energy output consists of hydroelectricity at 46 per cent while thermal energy makes up 54 percent. When the different major hydroelectric dam projects such as Lom Pangar, Nachtigal, Memve’ele and Mekin, the speaker said Cameroon could reach a total electricity output of 1,368 MW by 2018.The report further highlighted the importance of the wood energy whose production reached over 13 million metric tonnes in 2009 as well as ongoing experimentation of solar, wind, wave and biogas forms of energy.
Underscoring the importance of the SIE-Cameroun project, the Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Michael Ngako Tomdio said the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper, GESP, recommends that the implementation of important ongoing energy programmes be accompanied by strategic planning instruments such as the Energy Information System to enable the country to have a common information database on energy sources, indicators to monitor the implementation of the country’s energy policy and professional experience that could be put at the disposal of other countries.
The activities of SIE-Cameroun were launched in April 2007 with the objective of setting up a functional and lasting energy information system entirely funded by the national budget .
