Africa Oil & Gas: Angola reduces oil production by 29,000 barrels a day

Angola will reduce its oil production by 29,000 barrels per day from January, under a decision of the 175th conference of the cartel, held on 6 and 7 December in Vienna, Austria, according to official information.

Carlos Saturnino, president of Angolan oil company Sonangol, said that that amount corresponds to about 2.0% of average daily production estimated at 1.5 million barrels per day, “a small but important decrease to keep current levels of oil prices stable.”

Saturnino, who was speaking on the sidelines of a memorandum of understanding with the ExxonMobil group for oil exploration in the Namibe basin, said OPEC intended to stabilise the price of a barrel of oil at between US$55 and US$80.

At the Vienna meeting in which Angola participated, OPEC and non-member countries decided to cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day, with 800,000 for cartel members and 400,000 for non-members, with a view to stabilising prices on the international market as of January.

This decision will be maintained for an initial period of six months and should be re-assessed in April 2019, according to the Angop news agency.

Angolan oil production in November was 1.521 million barrels per day (bpd) according to secondary sources, a monthly increase of 3,000 bpd, according to OPEC.

The monthly report on the oil market for December also said that, according to direct communication, Angola’s production totalled 1.417 million bpd, a number which shows a monthly decline of 40,000 bpd. (source: Macauhub)