Angola affirms its position as oil and gas heavyweight with pipeline of projects announced at AEW2024

Angola, Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer, is solidifying its status as a major oil and gas player through a diversified investment strategy.

What: At the African Energy Week 2024 conference, Angola introduced an impressive lineup of oil and gas projects.

Why: The government is encouraging investment in exploration by making the business environment more transparent and more competitive.

What next: In addition to its focus on gas, Angola is striving to sustain oil production levels above 1mn barrels per day (bpd) past 2027

Angola has presented an exciting pipeline of projects set to consolidate its position as an oil and gas heavyweight at the African Energy Week: Invest in African Energies (AEW2024) conference in Cape Town.

At an Angola-focused roundtable, US energy supermajor Chevron announced that its Sanha Lean Gas Connection project in Angola was set to begin production in December 2024. Toni Henning, Chevron’s commercial general manager for Southern Africa, said the project would supply gas to the Angola LNG facility, as noted by the African Energy Chamber (AEC) in a press release on November 5.

This $300mn project includes a platform development connected to the existing Sanha Condensate complex. Led by Chevron, the project is one of several gas-centred investments the company is pursuing in Angola with various partners.

“We have been in Angola for 70 years and it has only been possible because of our strong partners,” Henning said. “We lead in gas and have a couple of projects underway. Sanha Lean Gas has always been part of our gas profile in Angola. We had it fabricated in Lobito, with 1,000 direct jobs and 3,000 indirect jobs created.”

The roundtable event was sponsored by Angola’s National Oil, Gas & Biofuels Agency (ANPG) together with the country’s national oil company (NOC) Sonangol, independent Angolan operator Azule Energy (a joint venture of supermajors BP and Eni) and ACREP, a smaller independent Angolan oil and gas explorer.

Another noteworthy development is the Quiluma and Maboqueiro project operated by Azule Energy. Angola’s New Gas Consortium (NGC), which oversees the project, includes several partners: Eni (25.6%), Chevron's affiliate Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC) (31%), Sonangol (19.8%), BP (11.8%) and TotalEnergies (11.8%).

“The project is progressing well and we are planning [production] start-up for late 2025,” said Azule Energy CEO Adriano Mongini. “This is the first non-associated gas project in Angola, and hopefully, the first of many.”

The Quiluma and Maboqueiro project is designed to extract natural gas that is not found in association with oil. It includes the development of two offshore wellhead platforms—one for each field—alongside a gas-processing plant onshore and pipelines to transport the gas. The primary objective of the project is to provide feedstock to the Angola LNG plant in Soyo, which produces LNG for export and supplies gas to the domestic market.

Beyond gas

In addition to its focus on gas, Angola, Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, is striving to sustain oil production levels above 1mn barrels per day (bpd) past 2027. To support this goal, the government is encouraging investment in exploration, with ANPG planning to kick off its 2025 bid round in the first quarter of next year. This bid round is part of a broader set of reforms designed to stimulate exploration and boost production.

“We wanted to make the business environment more transparent and more competitive,” said ANPG executive board member Alcides Andrades. “We have marginal field opportunities and new legislation for gas, making it possible for investors to have gas rights.”

Angola is solidifying its status as a major oil and gas player through a diversified investment strategy, with recent developments underscoring this progress. For instance, TotalEnergies and its partners on the Kaminho Development in Block 20/11 committed to a $6bn final investment decision (FID) in 2024.

The Kaminho project is a major deepwater oil development situated in the Kwanza Basin approximately 100km offshore Luanda. Led by TotalEnergies, with partners Petronas and Sonangol, the project focuses on developing the Cameia and Golfinho fields. It involves converting a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) into a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit, which will be linked to a subsea production network. The FPSO is specifically designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reinjecting associated gas back into the reservoirs, thereby eliminating routine flaring.

Rui Rodrigues, director of TotalEnergies EP Angola, highlighted that the Kaminho project was particularly significant as it opened a new producing province within Angola. “The majority of Angola’s production is derived from the north, but with Kaminho, we are diversifying supply,” he said, adding that TotalEnergies was “on track to deliver the project by 2028.”

Additionally, TotalEnergies anticipates the Begonia field development, an offshore oil project located in Block 17/06 in the Lower Congo Basin approximately 150 km off the coast of Angola, to start production in the coming months. McDermott International is leading the EPC support for the project, which involves five wells tied back to the existing Pazflor FPSO.

According to Mahesh Swaminathan, senior vice president of Subsea and Floating Facilities at McDermott International, the EPC work on the project is nearly complete. “From an engineering perspective, we are nearly done. The vessel will enter any time soon,” he was quoted by the AEC as saying.

McDermott International is also focusing on capacity building in Angola. “We are setting up an engineering office in Angola, where we will train engineers from across the world, Swaminathan said.

During the roundtable discussion, Katrina Fisher, lead country manager and GM at ExxonMobil, updated the participants on Block 15, one of Angola’s longest-producing assets.

“We celebrated our 30th anniversary of Block 15 in August 2024 and we also recently made a discovery – Likember-01 – at the block, representing our 19th discovery at Block 15. With this, we have increased our production by 30% and offset decline,” Fisher said.

Pipeline of projects

Angola has a dynamic portfolio of projects in progress. In addition to advancing upstream initiatives, Angola’s national oil company, Sonangol, is focused on increasing the country’s refining capacity. According to Sonangol’s board director Kátia Epalanga, the NOC is seeking more than 400,000 bpd in refining capacity by 2027. “The three new refineries underway will help us reach this capacity,” she said.

Angola also presents abundant opportunities for international service providers like SLB, which in 2024 celebrated 55 years of operations in Angola. “We continue to see a lot of activity happening across the life of the oilfield,” said Miguel Baptista, SLB’s MD for Central, East, and Southern Africa. “With this, there is good opportunity for the industry to push the boundaries of technology.”

Independents also view Angola as a promising market. UK-based oil and gas explorer and developer Afentra entered the market three years ago. The company is “focusing on growth in Angola: growth on the Kwanza Basin, growth on Block 3/05 and growth with regards to new deals,” according to Afentra COO Ian Cloke, who described Angola as “a fantastic market to be in.”

Nigeria-based AA&R Investment Group, which has yet to enter the Angolan market, shares this enthusiasm. “Angola is the right place to be and we are looking for opportunity there,” Abdullahi Bashir Haske, group MD noted. “We are looking at onshore and offshore blocks and we are looking at participating in the bid round.”