Public tenders for the award of 10 oil concessions in the Benguela and Namibe basins will be launched on 2 October, the president of Angola’s National Oil, Gas and Biofuel Agency (ANPG) said on Tuesday in Luanda.

Paulino Jerónimo, quoted by the Angop news agency, said that the aim of the tender is to boost and maximise oil exploration in the country, which is an important step in the relaunch of the oil business that, if successful, will serve to replace the reserves that have already been depleted.

ANPG has drawn up a short-, medium- and long-term strategic plan to try to prevent the decline in oil production in Angola, which is currently around 1.4 million barrels per day.

In the short term, the agency will seek to reduce the number of unplanned outages due to equipment malfunctioning, which could allow for additional production and consequently reduce the current decline.

The plan drafted by the ANPG focuses, in the medium and long term, on the exploration of blocks already at the end of life, with operators being encouraged to carry out more seismic analyses to identify unexplored pockets, whose oil will be extracted with new wells.

“We expect this operation to slightly reduce the decline in production,” said the ANPG president recently, adding that oil company ESSO was already involved in this activity after Sonangol had started the process. (Macauhub)