Angola seeks to be Africa's top oil power !


Angola is driving to become Africa's leading oil producer and that's expected to gain momentum after its president since 1979, the autocratic onetime jungle fighter Jose Eduardo dos Santos, won another five years in office. More than one-third of Angola's 21 million people live below the poverty line and the disparity between rich and poor is widening, despite the country's oil wealth and the prospect of that swelling on the back of recent deep-water discoveries offshore that are expected to elevate Angola to Africa's top oil producer.
Right now, with a production level of 1.8 million barrels per day, it trails Nigeria, the continent's top producer with an output of 2.5 million bpd,with the new offshore discoveries in the Kwanza Basin, containing at least 1.5 billion barrels, and Nigeria's ( my Country) oil industry in turmoil, Luanda expects to double output to 3.5 million bpd, on a par with Canada, by 2020. major international oil companies seek to secure production-sharing agreements in Angola's offshore blocks amid West Africa's oil surge. Britain's BP, Total of France and Norway's Statoil, ConocoPhillips of the United States and Italy's Eni SpA all have obtained exploration rights in the Kwanza and Benguela basins, seen as an extension of Brazil's prolific Santos and Campos zones.
The Financial Times reported that BP has acquired four new blocks covering 7,490 square miles. "The awards, including a 40 percent stake in a separate block in the Benguela Basin, mean the British group now has interests in nine blocks, accounting for a total acreage of 12,680 square miles," the business daily noted. Angola's oil wealth, plus its diamond fields, has made it a major economic power in southern Africa, rivaling South Africa. Pretoria has established close relations with Angola, where the African National Congress maintained guerrilla training camps during the apartheid era in the 1970s and 1980s. But in the final analysis Angola and South Africa are competing for influence in southern Africa. Angola's burgeoning oil wealth could be the deciding factor.

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