![[Angola] The National Gas and Biofuels Agency outlines strategies to reverse oil decline](Images/2018/05/Oil_nigeria.jpg)
[Angola] The National Gas and Biofuels Agency outlines strategies to reverse oil decline
The National Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANPG) has drawn up a short-, medium- and long-term strategic plan to reduce the decline in oil production, currently estimated at 1,400,000 barrels per day.
In the short term, being the first and great objective, the ANPG will attack the reduction in the number of unplanned stops due to equipment malfunction, which could allow the additional production and, consequently, the reduction of the current decline.
According to the chairman of ANPG's Board of Directors, Paulino Jerónimo, speaking at the 2nd Edition of the Business Forum of the Americas-Angola Chamber of Commerce (Amcham), unplanned production stops are consuming around 10-15% of daily crude oil production in Angola.
Paulino Jerónimo, who spoke on "The Challenges and Opportunities of the Oil Industry", by way of example, announced that on May 23 of this year Angola produced about one million and 415 thousand barrels of oil per day, an amount that was no longer produced due to the stops, and there was a loss of 169 thousand barrels a day of black gold.
"This issue has to be tackled with improved preventive maintenance, even though it has been adversely affected by the drop in the price of a barrel of oil," he said.
The second plan of the National Oil and Gas Agency is to develop and produce additional costs in existing mature fields, which are not all being produced by drilled wells.
In this way, the ANPG is encouraging operators to carry out 4D seismic analysis, to identify non-produced pockets, and then to drill new wells (in mature fields), an initiative planned for 2020.
By 2020, many wells will be drilled and will also bring in additional oil production.
An example of this initiative is being implemented by ESSO, after Sonangol, a former concessionaire, has taken steps around this strategy.
"We expect this operation to slightly reduce the decline in production," says the ANPG official.
Another strategy has to do with exploration in developing areas, so that in case of discovery, they are easily put into production.
Marginal discoveries is another strategic plan, according to Paulino Jerónimo.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, it has made several discoveries and many of them were not economically viable in light of existing contracts.
With the issuance of a Presidential Decree that gives fiscal and contractual incentives to these discoveries, this purpose comes into play - which will allow the development of these.
According to Paulino Jerónimo, more than four billion barrels of oil reserves are to be produced from these marginal discoveries.
Still in this framework, ANPG will soon begin a process for the development of the first marginal discoveries in partnership with Chevron in Block Zero, and if successful, a series of 10 to 15 new projects will be carried out.
"If two or three years ago we managed to get the whole project going, we would have between 30 and 40 projects only from the marginal discoveries," he said.
By this means, the ANPG intends to mitigate the decline and if possible stabilize production at a given farm-based level.
In the last 20 years, only three bids were carried out in Angola - in 1999, 2016 and 2011.
