ANGOLA’s deep-water licences now hold 96 substantial oil discoveries, of which 29 fields are on stream and 10 are under development. But only one stand-alone development project has been launched in recent years.
With the country’s leading operators – Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil and BP – all holding substantial banks of development prospects, exploration drilling in many blocks has ground to a halt. Accordingly, the focus for new finds has shifted to more recently awarded areas. Eni and Total have had successes in, respectively, Blocks 15/06 and 17/06, and January’s pre-salt discovery by Mærsk in Block 23 – a hitherto unproductive area in the Kwanza basin – is highly encouraging for the recently awarded adjacent blocks with pre-salt potential.
While Angola’s deep waters can offer frontier-size discoveries, development schemes are usually far from simple. Reservoirs are often at fairly shallow depths below the seabed, limiting the scope for deviated drilling,...