CAPE TOWN - Nigeria and Angola must speed up expansion plans if they are to meet targets of doubling oil output and grow Africa's share and influence of the global industry, an ExxonMobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) executive said on Wednesday.
Kevin Biddle, ExxonMobil's Vice President for Africa, told an oil and gas conference in South Africa that Angola wanted to raise production to two million barrels per day (bpd) from just above one million while Nigeria wanted to double to four million bpd by 2008.
"Things will have to be accelerated to meet these targets in just four years," Biddle said. "There are opportunities there but to meet the desires of the two countries some things will need to be done quickly to spur the process."
Biddle said production of the first oil from ExxonMobil's own Erha deepwater project in Nigeria had been delayed to 2006 from 2005 because of regulatory and other technical issues. He would not give further details or say when exactly in 2006 production would flow from Erha.
"Production delays are deadly in this environment and they have an impact on the return on investment," he said.
Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa's most populous country and largest oil producer. Angola is the continent's number two oil producer and has attracted significant attention since the end of three decades of civil war in 2002.
ExxonMobil's oil interests in Nigeria are mainly offshore and Biddle said the company was not as affected as some other industry players by strife in some onshore oil producing areas.
Biddle said ExxonMobil's Angola projects were all on course with Kizomba A in production, Kizomba B due next year and Kizomba C and D in the pipeline stage.
"We are going along as well as we would expect in Angola," Biddle said.
Biddle said ExxonMobil was concerned about proposed legislation in Angola that would require oil companies to bank their oil proceeds in that country: "It is something that concerns us and we are talking to Angolan authorities about it."
PROSPECTS IN NIGER, CHAD
He said a significant amount of oil reserves had been found in Niger but any exports were a long way off. He said ExxonMobil was drilling the second of a three-well programme but would not give estimates of when production could come on stream.
ExxonMobil's production from Chad stood at around 225,000 bpd and the firm would start further oil exploration there this month under its extended licence, Biddle said.
ExxonMobil's attributable oil from Africa is seen growing steadily in the region of 600,000 bpd to 900,000 bpd. Its global attributable oil production is around 4.2 million bpd.
Story by Manoah Esipisu
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
