Angola’s National Agency of Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG) has awarded three deep water concessions to ENI and Total in its 2019 Namibe Basin licensing rounds.
The country’s national oil company, Sonangol, together with Equinor and BP, won smaller stakes in the frontier block. The bid round for the fields in the Namibe and Benguela basins closed in November 2019 and the remaining stakes are being negotiated.
This was Angola’s first public auction since the pre-salt layer blocks auction of 2011 and the first of a series of licensing rounds to take place under ANPG. The bidding round followed a strategy set out under Presidential Decree No. 52/19, which was released in 2018, in an effort to boost exploration, maximize reserve replacement and increase Angola’s oil and gas production.
The licensing round was guided by Angola Law No. 10/04 of November 12, 2004 (the Petroleum Activities Law, as amended by Law No. 5/19 of April 18, 2019), and Angola Presidential Decree No. 86/18 of April 2, 2018, which states how public tenders and bids should be carried out. ANPG holds the mineral rights for the exploration, development, and production of liquid and gas hydrocarbons in Angola.