Exploration & Production

We search for hydrocarbons on all, marine and terrestrial, sedimentary basins and explore and produce this energy resource.

Sonangol USA involves lease granting both onshore and offshore of Angola and oil exploration and production.

Offshore E&P

Oil exploration in Angola is mainly done offshore at depths of over 1,200 meters. Thus, most operators use groundbreaking technological features when searcing for oil in our deepwaters. With prohibitive costs - each deepwater well costs between 20 million to 50 million USD - to be carried out each deepwater venture requires from the contractor group financial strength, ability to drill, careful beforehand planning and expert development work afterwards.Through cutting-edge technology and engineering innovation, exploration in Blocks 15, 17 and 18 has achieved spectacular success by any standards.

Crude oil exploration field in Great Plutonium began on October 1, 2007, and consists of 43 wells - including 20 producers, 20 water injectors and 3 gas injectors. Its estimated production is 200,000 BPD of crude oil with low sulfur content and average density, an amount that puts the daily production in Angola closer to the target of 2 million barrels per day.

Onshore E&P

The first concession license to prospect and search for hydrocarbons in Angola was given to a firm called Canha & Formigal, whose operating company was Pesquisas Mineiras de Angola (PEMA). This concession covered an area of 114,000 km2 and included the whole of the onshore part of the sedimentary basins of the Congo and Kwanza rivers, between the present cities of Soyo, to the north, and Sumbe, to the south.

In July 1961, in the wake of work begun by the Research Mission, the operating company then known as Petrangol, discovered the first major field, the Tobias Field, in the Cape Ledo region, which not only allowed Angola to become self-sufficient in terms of crude oil but also put an end, once and for all, to the skepticism of many as to the existence, underground, of the precious "black-gold" in Angola.

At the present, the Angolan onshore comprises the land areas of the Congo, Kwanza, Benguela, and Namib Basins and the interior Kassanje, Okavango and Owango basins. At this time the only basin in operation is the Lower Congo, in the onshore area of the Congo River, also known as the Soyo area.