FT: US-Africa oil trade wanes after shale revolution

There used to be a joke in the oil industry that you could walk from the US to Nigeria without getting your feet wet – just jump from one oil tanker to another.

The line neatly encapsulated the reality: as recently as five years ago, an armada of tankers sailed every month from Africa to the US coast, delivering oil worth billions of US dollars.

Not any more. The American shale revolution, which was supposed to liberate the US from Middle Eastern oil, has instead brought freedom from an unexpected location: Africa. US oil imports from the African continent have this year plunged to a 40-year low.

The collapse in the oil trade has weakened the most important economic link between the US and Africa, just as Washington launches the first US-Africa summit this week in an effort to win the minds, and wallets, of Africa’s population.
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