Angola’s National Oil, Gas, and Biofuels Agency (ANPG) revealed plans to award 15 new concessions before the end of 2024. During the Angola Oil & Gas (AOG) 2024 pre-conference on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, Hélder Iombo, ANPG’s Director of Negotiations, announced that these upcoming licenses will raise the total number of awarded blocks in the country to 47 since 2019.
Angola is currently offering 30 available blocks and wrapped up its 2023 tender in January 2024, receiving 53 bids from various companies. The country is gearing up for its next bid round in the first quarter of 2025. Since 2019, 32 concessions have been awarded, with more than 50 blocks anticipated to be licensed by the end of the six-year licensing round next year. Additionally, Angola has outlined an investment pipeline exceeding $60 billion for the upstream market over the next five years, primarily from already approved work budgets.
“We have six energy majors active in Angola, and currently, all these majors are expanding their portfolios. This is clear that the policies Angola has been implementing are effective,” said Iombo. He added that in addition to implemented decrees, “we have renegotiated all of our contracts to provide better terms for investors and to encourage companies to not only invest but increase production. This is a key pillar enabling us to maintain production at 1.1 million barrels per day. We have also approved the incremental production decree, which will be published soon.”
Looking ahead, Angola aims to maintain production through its next bid round, permanent offer program, and incremental production initiative. Up to 9 blocks are available in the 2025 bid round: 11 through the permanent offer program; 6 onshore blocks; and, for the first time ever, 4 marginal field opportunities are on offer. These opportunities aim to drive exploration and development in Angola.
Beyond new blocks, Angola is incentivising reinvestment across its producing assets. Victor Santos, Technician DPRO at the ANPG, explained that “most of the basins in the Lower Congo basin are mature and have produced for years, but we realised that these fields still offer potential that can be optimised, adding new oil to the production system in Angola. To increase production, we needed to change the terms so that we incentivise operators to bring new production online.”
The country’s incremental production initiative offers improved fiscals for oil produced above the base-production levels of the existing asset. This way, companies have the means to recover costs, invest more, and produce more.
The AOG 2024 pre-conference is being held today in Luanda, setting the stage for the main event on October 2-3. The pre-conference included a range of technical workshops and presentations that explored different aspects of Angola’s oil and gas value chain.
