Angola intends to implement faster exploration concessions from next year as part of a new long-term hydrocarbon strategy that aims to attract investment and stimulate oil and gas production, a senior government official said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Cape Town.
The 25-year plan seeks to build on regulatory reforms that have seen oil companies, including TotalEnergies and Eni, recently commit billions of dollars to projects in Sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria.
Angola intends to drop its multi-year oil and gas auction rounds and will open up more than 100 blocks, mainly onshore, as soon as the plan is passed later this year, said Alcides Andrade, a board member at the National Agency for Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG), late on Wednesday.
He said ANPG wanted to reduce the time taken to award concessions, aiming for a three-month process versus the current six months.
On exploration, it will not be a "one-size-fits-all" approach on terms and conditions, but rather a risk-profile-based model that distinguishes between marginal or mature fields and onshore versus deep-water blocks, for example.
Drilling more exploration wells will hopefully lead to higher crude production over the long term, Andrade said, as Angola aims to grow its current oil output of around 1 million barrels per day.
(Reuters - Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
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