Oxford Economics estimates that oil production in Angola will increase by 3% this year, to 1.16 million barrels per day, having risen 7.5% in the first half, due to last year’s works.
‘Due to extensive maintenance operations in the first quarter of 2023, cumulative oil production in the first half of this year is 7.5 per cent above production in the same period last year,’ the analysts write in their note, which points to an increase in production of around 3 per cent this year.
‘We currently expect oil production to rise by 3 per cent to 1.16 million barrels per day in 2024, up from 1.13 million per day last year,’ write the analysts from the African department of Oxford Economics.
In the note sent to clients and to which Lusa had access, Oxford Economics says that ‘although Angola is no longer limited to the targets of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), it is likely that there will be losses in production due to the maintenance and depletion of older wells’.
However, they add, the start-up of Phase 3 of TotalEnergies’ CLOV Project at the end of this year could increase production by 60,000 barrels a day, but not immediately, and oil exports could also get a boost when the Cabinda refinery comes on stream in November.
Angola’s oil production fell slightly in June, by around 40,000 barrels a day, to 1.14 million, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), slightly above the limit imposed by the Agency, which led Angola to leave the cartel, after 16 years, in December last year, because it didn’t agree with the limit.
In March, Angola’s Secretary of State for Oil and Gas, José Barroso, said that the country’s production target was 1.1 million barrels by 2030, hoping that the new wells would compensate for the 15% annual reduction in older wells.
Back in June, the Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas said that Angola’s current efforts were not focused on increasing oil production, but on keeping it at around one million barrels a day.
‘Our big fight now is not to increase production, it’s to stabilise production there at a million or so [barrels],’ said Diamantino Azevedo on June 11, while speaking to members of the National Assembly’s Economy and Finance Committee at a parliamentary hearing to discuss the situation in the sector he heads.
He explained that ‘it’s natural’ that Angola’s production has been declining for some years, due to the lack of investment and capacity to find new wells to compensate for the natural decline of older wells.
Lusa
