Angola’s deepwater oil exploration costs fell 30 percent between 2014 and this year, according to a report by energy consultancy WoodMackenzie.

“Deepwater exploration in Angola is also off the scale by the level of savings, with production costs in 2017 being 30% cheaper than 2014 levels in some projects,” according to an analysis of world production costs.

The report points out that the major international oil companies have made an effort “to focus on the harmonization of procedures and to benefit from lower material costs.”

“The message from the operators is clear: this downward curve will be different. The vast majority of the savings made in the deepwater wells between 2014 and 2017 have come to stay regardless of the evolution of oil prices,” reads the document.

These savings, WoodMackenzie estimates, amounted to $ 410 billion over the past three years, with the rental of drilling equipment for these wells down 65 percent from 2014 levels, for example.

The problem, they add, is that “the global services sector [supplied to oil exploration] is no longer able to cut marginal”, so WoodMackenzie predicts that “costs will increase in 2019 and 2020 due to increased demand”.

Angola was the largest oil producer in Africa in 2016, ahead of Nigeria, but since the end of 2014 has experienced a strong financial, economic and foreign exchange crisis due to the drop in oil export revenues.source: Lusa