Africa Oil & Power, a leading investment promotion platform for the African energy sector, launched a report on Thursday called ‘Angola COVID-19 Response,’ analysing the country’s strategy to mitigate the impact of the global pandemic on its energy sector, with a particular focus on its oil and gas upstream sector, which constitutes a fundamental part of Angola’s economic lifeblood.
“Mitigating the natural decline of production represents one of the largest challenges of the sector and therefore, it is our top priority,” Diamantino Azevedo, Minister of Mineral Resources, Petroleum and Gas of Angola stated in the report.
He described the ministry’s upstream strategy as being sustained on four pillars, easing access to new promising acreage, improving geological information and access to it, successfully deploying the General Concession Award Strategy and intensifying exploration activity.
These efforts are being combined with the revision of the country’s marginal fields potential together with a strong drive to develop downstream projects.
Paulino Jerónimo, President of ANPG, highlighted the government’s collaboration with the oil and gas majors to ensure the continuity of operations, particularly with the licence extensions granted to the operators of blocks 14, 15, 17 and 18.
Furthermore, he underlined the important developments achieved in natural gas monetisation, particularly when it comes to the “New Gas Consortium, which provides for the development of gas fields in blocks 1, 2 and 3 for the supply of Angola LNG and for other domestic projects, and the Sanha Lean Gas Connection from Cabinda which aims to build a platform for sending gas from the Nemba and Sanha fields to Angola LNG.”
Besides the extensive analysis of the many strategies and policies deployed by the sector’s regulators, the report also includes interviews with operators, Total Angola and Equinor Angola, among other relevant contributions.
“At this pivotal moment in the Angolan global oil and gas industry, where uncertainty dominates the sector, the Angola COVID-19 Response report helps bring clarity to the public discourse on Angola. and It helps understand, as well as value the determined actions taken by the Angolan government authorities to mitigate the impact of this crisis,” said Sergio Pugliese, President of the Africa Energy Chamber for Angola.
