Luke Patey

Lead Senior Research Fellow

Luke Patey is Lead Senior Research Fellow of the Africa oil and gas programme at OIES. He is also senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and fellow at the Rift Valley Institute. Patey is author of How China Loses: The Pushback abasing Chinese Global Ambitions (OUP, 2021), The New Kings of Crude: China, India, and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan (Hurst, 2014), which was short-listed for the Africa-Asia Book Prize, and co-editor of Sudan Looks East: China, India, and the Politics of Asian Alternatives (James Currey, 2014) with Daniel Large.

Patey has written for the New York Times, the Finan­cial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The Hindu, and VICE News. His commentary has appeared in Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Reuters, Al Jazeera, China Central Television (CCTV), the BBC World Service, and Radio France. He has also published scholarly articles in African Affairs, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Middle East Policy, and Third World Quarterly. He has been a vis­it­ing scholar at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationals (Paris), Peking Uni­ver­sity (Bei­jing), the Social Sci­ence Research Coun­cil (New York), and the United Nations University (Tokyo). He holds a BSc (Hons.) in commerce from Queen’s University (Kingston) and a MSc and PhD from the Copenhagen Business School.

Patey’s research and commentary can be found at lukepatey.com

Contact

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                    [post_content] => East Africa has followed a long road of highs and lows in developing its oil resources. On the back of high global oil prices between 2004 and 2014, a rush of new exploration put the region on the map as a new frontier for African oil. But it did not take long for the momentum of East Africa’s oil rush to lose steam. Long regulatory delays, security risks, and the fall of global oil prices, all served to deflate expectations for the region’s potential.

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                    [post_content] => From 2006 onward, a series of oil discoveries put Uganda on the global energy map. These were the largest onshore oil finds in sub-Saharan Africa in over two decades, and part of an oil and gas surge in East Africa and a wider energy boom on the continent. But almost immediately after the discovery of oil, a series of regulatory disputes between the Ugandan government and international oil companies delayed development and production.

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                    [post_content] => In 2012, Kenya became the latest East African country to enter the oil and gas scene. The discovery of oil resources in the Turkana County provided an extra boost to Kenya’s already growing and diverse economy. But significant political, social, and security challenges remain. This paper analyses the opportunities and risks facing Kenya’s oil industry and its role as a regional oil transport hub.

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Latest Publications by Luke Patey