Another Rumble in the Jungle

Although the last of the African soccer teams have left the World Cup in the round of 16, the importance of African nations in the worldwide crude oil markets is poised for a more positive fate. Take Angola for example. The first commercial oil discovery in Angola, then a Portuguese colony, was made back in 1955. After Angola gained independence in 1975, a civil war broke out that lasted for 27 years. As seen in Fig. 1, despite this conflict, Angolan production gradually increased, reaching almost 750,000 barrels per day by 2000 – most of which came from offshore fields off the coast of Cabinda. However, the hostilities did delay the development of several deepwater fields that were discovered in the 1990s. When the internal conflict ended in 2002, production quickly ramped up until 2008 as multiple deepwater fields came online. Angolan production peaked in 2008 at approximately 1.9 million barrels per day. Since then, the country’s production has been stagnant, mainly due to technical challenges as well as steep decline rates associated with some of these fields. Download here