For much of the 20th century, the global oil trade resembled a risky maritime gamble. Tankers the length of skyscrapers ferried crude across oceans, often with minimal safety safeguards. When accidents happened, they were not minor mishaps—they were environmental catastrophes measured in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil. The map above tells the story of the largest oil tanker spills since 1967, plotting where they occurred and how massive they were.

East Africa is sitting on hydrocarbons. The question is: are they sitting idle? From the gas-rich coast of Tanzania to the oil basins of South Sudan and Uganda, the region’s energy map reads like a story of promise—heavy on discovery, lighter on production. International oil majors, Asian state-backed firms, and regional independents have all planted their flags. Yet production remains concentrated in a few pockets.

Before we dive into numbers, let’s clarify what we mean by system losses. Simply put, system losses are the electrical energy lost as it travels from power plants to consumers. These losses fall into two categories: Technical losses – energy lost due to the physics of transmission and the efficiency of the grid itself. Think of it as electricity slipping through the cracks of aging wires and transformers. Commercial losses – energy lost due to human factors like il