The oil and gas sector remains one of the world’s most complex, capital-intensive, and strategically important industries. Spanning exploration and production through refining, transportation, and marketing, the industry depends on sophisticated financing structures to sustain operations and manage continual market volatility. As global energy consumption patterns shift and sustainability expectations heighten, financial institutions play an increasingly central role in ensuring the long-term resilience and competitiveness of the sector.

Reindolf Ofosu-Hene, Head of Resources & Energy at Absa Bank, provides insights into the financing landscape of the oil and gas industry, highlighting emerging opportunities, evolving risks, and the strategic solutions financial institutions must deliver to support sustainable growth.

The Oil and Gas Value Chain: A Complex Integrated Ecosystem

The oil and gas value chain comprises three broad segments, each with distinct operational dynamics and financing needs.

The upstream segment covers exploration and production (E&P), where companies identify and develop oil and gas reserves. This stage is highly capital-intensive and demands advanced technical expertise, with financing structures designed to manage geological uncertainty and exposure to commodity price fluctuations.

Midstream activities focus on the transportation, storage, and processing of crude oil and natural gas. These asset-heavy operations, including pipelines, terminals, shipping fleets, and storage facilities, typically require long-term infrastructure financing structured around stable, albeit regulated, cash flows.

Downstream operators are responsible for marketing and distributing refined products to end users through retail outlets. This segment operates under stringent environmental regulation and intense competition, making access to working capital and trade finance essential to sustaining margins and operational continuity.

Across all three segments, the ecosystem spans integrated energy majors, independent E&P firms, midstream specialists, refiners, and petrochemical producers. Each requires financing solutions tailored to its scale, risk profile, and exposure to market volatility.

Financing Opportunities across the Supply Chain

Despite cyclical downturns, the industry continues to attract significant investment. Key financing channels include:

Equity Financing: Equity remains vital for early-stage or expansion initiatives, particularly for companies demonstrating strong governance and ESG discipline. Pension funds, private equity firms, and institutional investors continue to view energy assets as attractive opportunities with long-term value potential.

Debt Financing: Debt remains the backbone of capital formation in the sector. Banks and capital markets offer tailored lending solutions for capital expenditure (CAPEX), working capital, and asset acquisitions. Institutions such as Absa bring deep sector expertise to structure loans aligned with production cycles and cash flow realities.

Alternative Financing Instruments: Innovative tools such as crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, and green bonds are gaining traction. Green financing has become especially important as investors seek to promote low-carbon technologies, emissions reduction, and broader ESG-aligned initiatives.

Project Finance: Large-scale developments rely heavily on project finance structures, often executed through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to ring-fence assets and isolate risks. These structures attract diverse pools of lenders and investors to support infrastructure such as pipelines, LNG terminals, and offshore platforms.

Strategic Partnerships: Joint ventures, technical alliances, and co-financing arrangements enable companies to share risks, access advanced technologies, and expand regionally. These partnerships also help optimise capital expenditure and accelerate project delivery.

Key Challenges Influencing Oil and Gas Financing

Investment decisions in the oil and gas sector are shaped by a combination of structural and emerging risks, many of which have become more pronounced in recent years. Together, these factors increase uncertainty around cash flows and elevate the importance of robust risk mitigation in financing structures.

At the market level, oil and gas prices remain highly sensitive to global demand patterns, geopolitical developments, and broader macroeconomic conditions. This volatility can undermine revenue forecasts and complicate debt serviceability, particularly for projects with long payback periods or limited pricing flexibility.

Beyond price risk, regulatory and political uncertainty continue to weigh heavily on investor sentiment. Changes in local content requirements, fiscal regimes, and environmental mandates can materially alter project economics, affecting both feasibility and long-term returns.

Operationally, execution risk has intensified as supply chains are disrupted by conflict, natural disasters, logistics bottlenecks, and material shortages. These pressures have contributed to cost inflation and schedule delays, challenges that are compounded by rising expenses for skilled labour, specialised equipment, and contractor services, further compressing margins across the value chain.

Environmental and social considerations add another layer of complexity. Heightened expectations around emissions reduction, water stewardship, and community engagement expose operators to legal, financial, and reputational risk, with direct implications for access to capital and project timelines.

Finally, infrastructure development brings its own technical and trade-related constraints. Construction delays, design revisions, and cost overruns can erode projected returns and weaken lender confidence, while tariffs and trade barriers affecting critical inputs such as steel, valves, and rigs continue to disrupt procurement and inflate costs across the supply chain.

Strategies for Mitigating Supply Chain Risk

As supply chain disruptions translate more directly into cost overruns, delays, and execution risk, resilience has become a core operational concern for oil and gas companies rather than a peripheral procurement issue. Strengthening that resilience requires a combination of structural and operational adjustments.

One priority is reducing concentration risk by broadening supplier networks across regions, which helps limit dependence on single sources and improves continuity in the event of disruptions. Companies are also investing more deliberately in digital capabilities. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and blockchain are increasingly used to improve visibility across the supply chain, optimise asset performance, and support earlier identification of operational risk. Alongside this, long-term relationships with reliable suppliers have become increasingly important, providing stability in deliveries, helping manage costs, and supporting closer collaboration under volatile conditions.

Absa Bank’s Strategic Capabilities in the Energy Sector

As a pan-African corporate and investment bank operating across ten markets, Absa Bank supports energy companies with financing and risk solutions that reflect how projects are executed in practice, across borders and across the value chain.

We bring together investment banking capabilities, including mergers and acquisitions advisory, equity and debt capital markets, leveraged finance, and project finance, with trade and working capital support for distributors and suppliers. This includes asset finance, import and export solutions, and guarantees, alongside liquidity and cash management services such as overnight and term deposits, money market funds, flexible current accounts, payments, collections, and digital banking infrastructure.

Risk management is integral to this approach, including hedging of foreign exchange and interest rate exposures, as well as card-issuing and acquiring solutions that support payment processing for businesses across Africa. In Ghana, Absa Bank provides financing, advisory, and risk management support tailored to both multinational operators and indigenous companies in the energy sector.

Conclusion

Financing the oil and gas supply chain requires deep sector knowledge, a clear understanding of regulatory dynamics, and the ability to price and manage risk across long project timelines. For banks, the role extends beyond providing capital. It includes structuring finance around operational realities, advising on risk, and supporting clients with tools to manage foreign exchange and interest rate exposure and to strengthen execution discipline.

As the industry moves toward more sustainable, efficient, and technologically advanced operations, the importance of strong financial partnerships will only increase. The institutions that add the most value will be those that combine balance-sheet capacity with practical risk management and a grounded understanding of how projects are delivered across Africa’s energy markets.

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The writer, Reindolf Ofosu-Hene, is the Head of Resources & Energy, Absa Bank Ghana Ltd