A lack of major investments, aging fields, and a decline in sector attractiveness have pushed Angola’s oil production to its lowest level in a decade, at a time when economic diversification is still slow. The outlook through 2050 remains unpromising.
Angola’s oil production fell by 40.2% over the past ten years, dropping from an average of 1.722 million barrels per day in 2016 to 1.029 million barrels per day in 2025, marking the lowest output in a decade. Compared to 2016, when the country reached the peak of its debt to China, Angola now produces 693,000 fewer barrels per day, resulting in a sharp decline in fiscal revenues.
This drop is the result of the annual production decline affecting the oil and gas industry. On an annual basis, between 2024 and 2025, production fell 9%, from 411.5 million barrels to 377.5 million barrels, according to the National Agency for Petroleum, Gas, and Biofuels (ANPG). The total production in the 12 months of 2025 amounted to 94% of the 400.8 million barrels of crude the government had forecasted for the year, according to the 2025 budget report.
Last year’s average production of 1.029 million barrels per day was 69,000 barrels below the 1.098 million barrels per day target set in the 2025 budget. The decline is largely due to natural depletion of mature fields and technical issues in infrastructure (such as FPSOs), causing unplanned production stoppages.
Although investments in the sector are frequently announced, they often take time to come online, and the projects currently being developed are insufficient to reverse the production decline. Direct investment data in Angola’s oil sector shows that capital inflows are far below past levels. For example, in 2014, $16.4 billion was invested, while in 2024 only $9.5 billion was invested, although this was still above the nearly $6.0 billion invested in 2017. Experts note that Angola is now paying a high price for the investment decline between 2016 and 2022.
Another challenge is that about 45% of the country’s 1,630 drilled oil wells are currently closed, though not permanently abandoned, ANPG revealed a few months ago.
For Patrício Quingongo, CEO of PetroAngola, it is crucial to accelerate the development of marginal fields and revise the fiscal regime and Oil Activities Law to make the national industry more competitive and attractive for investment.
Vladimir Pereira, PetroAngola’s oil market analyst, points to the lack of block auctions between 2011 and 2017 as a key cause of the production decline, coupled with falling well productivity. Since most of Angola’s production comes from mature fields that have been producing for over 30 years, these fields now show natural depletion, causing unplanned production stoppages and output losses.
Nevertheless, Pereira notes that improvements in legislation and the commissioning of some smaller projects have helped stabilize production just above the psychological threshold of 1 million barrels per day, preventing a sharp drop.
Examples include the CLOV Phase 3 project (Block 17), operated by TotalEnergies in partnership with ANPG and other partners, which began production in July 2025, adding 30,000 barrels per day. The Begónia project, Angola’s first inter-block development also operated by TotalEnergies and launched mid-last year, is expected to produce 30,000 barrels per day as well.
Source: Expansão
