26-04-03 Oil prospecting and production projects in Angola may in the next years be extended to the entire Kwanza River basin, once the existing peace environment in the country allows land oil exploitation, Sonangol Administrator Syanga Abilio said in Luanda. The manager, speaking at the 7th African Conference on Oil and Gas, said that right now studies are in progress to divide the perimeter into blocks and the results will be afterward submitted to the government's appreciation.
According to the Administrator of the National Oil Company, it was on the Kwanza River basin where the first oil perforations were done by "Fina Petroleos", but these land operations were suspended due to military instability. On the other hand, he reminded that, in the last 10 years, Angola registered huge indexes of success, for it managed to make great discoveries on the Angolan offshore and almost all renowned international companies operate in the country.

About the conference, Syanga Abilio said it will also serve tocatch investors, as well as exchange experiences on oil operations. In his turn, the Director of the International Relations Office with the Oil Ministry, Vieira Lopes, said to be Angola's intention to stimulate the local African business community to contribute to the development of each producer country's petroliferous industry.
As he said, Africa, in general, in terms of provision of services in the oil field, have mostly been working with western companies, what make them loose 10 to $ 15 bn annually. According to him, there is need to engage the local African business community so that industry, not only the oil one but every sector of the country's economy, could gain with the crude sector. As an example, he figured out countries like Brazil with 80 % of local companies working on servicing the oil industry, Malaysia with 70 % and Norway 50 %.

In the African continent, only Nigeria counts with 5 to 15 % of firms providing services to the petroliferous industry. The Pan-African Oil and Gas Conference is a joint organisation by the Oil Ministry, Sonangol, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in partnership with the British company International Trade Exhibitions (ITE Group).
That's an annual event, of which prime responsibility lies on UNCTAD. Last year, the meeting took place in Cameroon, this year it will happen in Angola and the gathering will be held in the Morocco Kingdom.

The Cameroon conference attracted ministers, representatives of national companies from 24 African countries, as well as from multinational firms such as TotalFinaElf, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, ChevronTexaco, Amerada Hess/Triton and Petronas. Also present were 30 international banking institutions plus 600 delegates from 52 countries.
Given the importance of Angola within the petroliferous context, the Angolan authorities expect these numbers to go up in the Luanda Conference. Angola presently produces 850,000 bpd of oil and its reserves are put at 12,5 bn barrels.