Total expects to increase its oil output in Angola by at least a third over the next two years as a new offshore oilfield comes on stream, and the French oil major predicts further big rises in output.

Total’s vice president for exploration and production operations in
Angola, Frederic Cegarra, told Reuters the new deep undersea stream,
known as Pazflor, was likely to add 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to
the firm’s output.

Total is already Angola’s second biggest oil producing company after
Exxon Mobil Corp. and responsible for operating oilfields with an
output of around 530,000 bpd of oil in 2008, of which 205,000 bpd was
its own equity oil.

“When Pazflor comes on stream in 2011, we will become the biggest
producer in Angola with 700,000 bpd at least,” Cegarra told Reuters in
an interview on Friday.

The Pazflor development covers four oilfields across a 600 sq km (232
sq mile) area about 140 km (87 miles) off the coast of Angola at depths
of up to 1.2 km beneath the sea.

Cegarra said Total believed Angola had huge potential as an oil
producer and forecast that the Southwest African country would raise
its oil production steadily in the coming years.

Angola is neck and neck with Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil producer
this year as militant attacks have reduced production in the oilfields
of the Niger Delta, and analysts say Angola is likely to consolidate
its position in future.

“VERY HIGH POTENTIAL”

Increasingly politically stable and safer after the end of nearly three
decades of civil war, Angola is becoming more and more attractive to
foreign oil companies and its giant offshore oilfields are attracting
increasing investment.

“Angola is a key country for us,” Cegarra said, adding the country was
responsible for a quarter of the firm’s oil output from Africa. Total
pumps similar quantities of oil in Nigeria and also has fields in
Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and Algeria.

“We are expecting next year to take a final investment decision on a
new field called CLOV, based on four oilfields — Cravo, Lirio,
Orquidea and Violeta,” he said, suggesting CLOV could be producing
around 160,000 bpd by 2015.

And Total is looking at another very deep offshore field in Angolan
block 32, which Cegarra said had great potential and could by 2015 be
comparable to CLOV or Pazflor.

“Angola has very high potential,” he said. “We all know that after 30
or 40 years of war it is not very easy to get people with all the areas
of expertise that we need. We also have the constraint of very high
costs of living and housing.”

“But an advantage of Angola is political stability and we think the climate is becoming more secure than in the past.”

“Investing in Angola has many advantages: you have stability, a stable
contractual environment, a solid legal framework. That means we can
plan to invest without being too anxious about the future.”

Cegarra said one constraint in Angola was its output targets as a
member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which
limit the amount of oil that can be produced.

Angola has said its OPEC output target is 1.656 million bpd, although
an OPEC internal document widely quoted by industry sources suggests
Angola’s output limit is 1.52 million bpd.

In fact, industry sources say Angola’s output is well above both targets and likely to be about 1.8 million bpd in November.

“Oil demand will grow as the economic crisis comes to an end. And when that happens, we don’t expect OPEC quotas,” Cegarra said.

Source: Reuters

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