Angola’s national oil company, Sonangol, signed a framework agreement with French multinational petroleum corporation TotalEnergies earlier this year to explore developing the first offshore drilling project in the Kwanza basin, an abundant and expansive oil field some 150 kilometers southwest of the country’s capital Luanda.
The provisional agreement inked in May between Sonangoal, TotalEnergies EP Angola and Agência Nacional de Petróleo, Gás e Biocombustíveis (ANPG), will pave the way for the future development of the Cameia and Golfinho oilfields, located on Blocks 20 and 21 of the Kwanza Basin.
A majority stake in the development would be owned by TotalEnergies, which already owns significant stakes in six other floating production storage and offloading facilities, also known as FPSOs, in the Angolan market.
Based in Paris, TotalEnergies was estimated by Forbes to be the 21st largest company in the world in 2023.
The project is a joint venture with Sonangol, a state-owned enterprise tasked with stewardship over Angola’s vast subsurface energy reserves.
Unsurprisingly, plans for the development that have come out of the provisional agreement point to one of Sonangol’s signature initiatives in recent years: sustainability.
According to preliminary plans, the Kwanza Basin development would generate electricity from a combined cycle turbine and implement a zero-flaring policy, which would reduce the facility’s carbon emissions.
This comes as Sonangol has invested heavily in new facilities and practices to both decarbonize Angola’s domestic energy industry and export to Western markets affordable green energy sources.
Sonangol is expected to complete construction next year on a new facility in Barro do Dande that will produce green ammonia, a substance that will allow for Angola to efficiently export green hydrogen—a low-emission energy source—from sub-Saharan Africa to high-demand markets in Europe.
The company is undergoing a gradual process of privatization, with the Angolan government set to sell 30% of the company’s equity to private investors by 2026.
Angola is one of the world’s largest petroleum exporters, producing between 1 to 2 million barrels of petroleum every day, and acceded to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 2007.
The country has emerged as an attractive destination for foreign investment over the last decade. Chevron, for example, the American oil company, is currently working with Sonangol to construct a refinery in Soyo, which is projected to become the largest foreign investment in Angolan history.
For oil producers like TotalEnergies, the Kwanza Basin could mark the ideal location for the development of FPSOs.
Situated off the Angolan coast directly due south of the Lower Congo Basin, one of Africa’s largest petroleum-rich regions, the Kwanza Basin is thought to have extensive reserves of hydrocarbons, including oil and methane.
Much of this is owed to the thick deposits of salt on the seabed, which over millennia have trapped hydrocarbons in underwater reservoirs and prevented their escape into the ocean water.
Sonangol has identified Blocks 20 and 21 of the basin as suitable for offshore discovery and production activities.
The development of FPSOs with TotalEnergies could add significant productive capacity to Angola’s petroleum industry and advance the country’s transition to energy self-sufficiency, a major objective of its current administration.
