Angola’s Oil Output To Increase

VENTURES AFRICA – Angola, which has emerged as Africa’s second-largest oil producer, would raise its oil output slightly next year, thanks to three oil exploration projects to be kick-started soon, it was reported on Thursday.

Angola’s oil sector is back up to up to speed after a fall in output in 2011 boosted by the start of Total’s Pazflor and ExxonMobil’s Kizomba D Satellites with a further lift expected when BP’s ultra-deep-water PSVM comes on stream with an expected 150.000 bpd.

But Jose de Vasconcelos, the country’s oil minister, said it was unlikely the output would reach a target of 2 million barrels per day.

He told Reuters on the sidelines of an OPEC meeting in Vienna that Angola LNG would start exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2013, later than expected.

“Maybe 1.8 million to 1.85 million bpd,” Vasconcelos said. “We have some operational problems, maintenance. To achieve 2 million we need to work more and more. I don’t believe we’ll achieve this target next year.”

Tags:African business news Angola GDP Angola oil production Angolan economy Business in Africa

Mzwandile Jacks

Mzwandile Jacks has been a financial journalist for more than 20 years. He has worked full time for the Sowetan, The Lowvelder, Mpumalanga News, Business Day, Primedia Publishing, Finance Week, This Day, Financial Mail and Business Report. His articles have also been published in The New Age, City Press, Fin 24 and many other niche magazines in the stable of Capemedia and Highbury Safika Media, both independent magazine publishers. He has covered Africa extensively while working for the above-mentioned publications. He studied journalism at the Peninsula Technikon in the Western Cape and Politics and English at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He cites South Africa’s pioneering journalists like Aggrey Klaaste, Joe Thloloe, Mathatha Tsedu, Monk Nkomo and Len Maseko as his mentors. He was voted the best black financial journalist at Finance Week in 2002. Rikus Delport, the editor of Finance Week at the time, described him as “a top notch journalist of that time.”