Angola currently offers 30 block opportunities. The country concluded its 2023 tender in January 2024, securing 53 bids from a suite of companies, and is preparing to launch its next bid round in Q1, 2025. To date, 32 concessions have been awarded since 2019, with more than 50 blocks expected to be licensed at the end of the country’s six-year licensing round next year. An investment pipeline of more than $60 billion is also planned across the upstream market within the next five years, predominately from work budgets that have already been approved.

“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, 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 incentivizing 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 optimized, adding new oil to the production system in Angola. To increase production, we needed to change the terms, so that we incentivize 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 takes place today in Luanda, serving as a prelude to the main program on October 2-3. The pre-conference program featured a series of technical workshops and presentations covering various aspects of the oil and gas value chain in Angola.