INTERVIEW: Afentra eyes major Angola growth after opting to stay independent

Africa-focused Afentra is looking ahead to a string of FIDs and new wells across its large Angolan oil portfolio in a bid to more than triple its production by 2030, CEO Paul McDade said, days after the company decided to remain independent.

In an interview with Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, McDade said Afentra's offshore oil assets, chiefly block 3/05 and newly acquired 3/24, would see net production grow from the current 6,300 b/d to over 20,000 b/d by 2030.

McDade, formerly of Tullow Oil, started the company just five years ago and has established a portfolio of assets across the Angolan onshore and offshore.

The plan for the "next five years is material production growth offshore, get after the onshore both exploration and early production, and continue with our new business and inorganic opportunities," he said.

In recent years, partners on 3/05, Afentra's key producing asset, have refurbished key equipment and platforms, maintaining production at around 21,000 b/d and fighting natural declines. State-run Sonangol is the operator, while France's Maurel & Prom and NIS Naftagas also hold stakes. Local player Etu Energias has agreed to sell its interest to the three main partners.

With refurbishments complete, McDade said the approach has shifted to new drilling to materially increase production. The Pacassa SW well was spud in April and should see first oil in Q3, with an initial rate of over 5,000 b/d, according to an Afentra presentation.

Filled with opportunities, Block 3/05 should head towards 30,000 b/d gross by 2027 and up to 40,000 b/d by 2028, McDade said.

Separately, the company in December secured a 40% operated stake in Block 3/24 offshore, which contains three discoveries. McDade said Afentra was looking to deploy a UK North Sea model of plugging tie-back projects into a central hub.

"We're working on the project this year and our aim is to FID the project either late 2026 or early 2027," he said. "It will be a three-well tie back to the Palanca facility, with a target of circa 10,000 b/d gross."

Onshore plans

In Angola's underexplored onshore, Afentra holds stakes in two Kwanza Basin blocks and is in the process of adding a third, KON 4, which it will operate.

The region saw significant drilling and production in the second half of the 20th century, but that ground to a halt with Angola's civil war, which began in 1975.

"The last exploration drilled in Kwanza Basin was in 1982," said McDade, noting that KON 4 has legacy fields including Quenguela Norte, which is estimated at over 200 million barrels of oil in place.

The company has shot an eFTG survey across the basin and is integrating and analyzing the data, McDade said. It plans to re-enter shuttered wells and deploy modern well techniques used in the US to bring the field back onstream.

KON 4 sits 50 km by highway from the 60,000 b/d Luanda refinery, which was built in 1958 to process Kwanza Basin crude, McDade said, adding that Angolan officials are "super keen to see us produce oil from the Kwanza Basin next year."

Afentra is also interested in entering a new country in the next five years – likely a producing country in West Africa – McDade said, by acquiring a small producing asset.

"We are always looking. If we were going into a new country, we'd want to go in with a material production-led entry, as opposed to...an exploration lead," he said.

But McDade is not concerned about being overly exposed to Angola, noting its "democratic progress," pragmatic approach, and immense upstream opportunity.

"In West Africa, there are two big markets and one of them is Angola," he said. "I've worked with a lot of regulators up and down Africa [and] ANPG is one of the most professional, enlightened regulators I have ever worked with."

Nevertheless, the country's institutions can be bureaucratic and slow. "Sonangol is a very large bureaucratic organization. It is never going to be the most efficient organization in the world," McDade said, adding that Afentra was helping the state oil giant with efficiencies and new ideas.

Strategic review

McDade was speaking days after Afentra – which stands for Africa Energy Transition – wrapped up a strategic review launched in December, during which it fielded buyout offers and ultimately decided to remain independent.

While market participants were predicting $55/b oil in December, making it hard to secure investment for upstream growth, McDade said, the climate has turned on its head due to the Iran war.

"The whole change in environment has really caused us to think we should go ahead independent," he said. "When we had offers on the table, we were sitting in a different world."

In April, Afentra sold a 500,000-barrel crude cargo at $120/b, he said, predicting a global "rethink about sourcing supply [as] West Africa doesn't have the potential bottlenecks you're seeing in the Strait of Hormuz."

The company also just secured a $125 million debt facility from trading house Gunvor.

When it comes to Afentra's strategy, McDade, who previously ran Africa-focused Tullow Oil, said he was focused on building strong relationships with host governments, prioritizing the technical side of the business, and adopting a field development "playbook that's taken straight from the North Sea."