From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#2 (October 1997), Briefs page

Offshore discoveries boost Africa's potential oil output

Several recent oil discoveries indicate that the deep waters off West Africa's coast will be a major new source of oil in the next decade. With more discoveries in the offing, analysts say West Africa's deep-water oil reserves will climb to 20 bn barrels, with potential production of up to 1 mn barrels per day by 2005.

In August, the French company Elf Aquitaine announced a big discovery off the coast of Angola. Officials were optimistic that the "Dalia" field's potential would surpass that of the nearby "Girossol" field discovered last year. Girossol's proven reserves have been estimated at 500-700 mn barrels of relatively light crude oil, but this could rise to 1.5 bn barrels. The discovery of fields with 1 bn barrels or more is a rare occurrence.

Exploration has proved particularly fruitful off the Angolan coast, where over one-third of the regional total of exploratory "wildcat" wells have so far been drilled. The US company Chevron has confirmed a find of up to 1 bn barrels in the deep-water "Kuito" field, north of the Dalia field. Several large discoveries have also been made off the coast of Nigeria.

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