This article was originally published on the African Energy Chamber website.
VIENNA – The African Energy Chamber (AEC) would like to congratulate the Republic of Congo on becoming Africa’s 7th country to join the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Congo is one of Africa’s mature oil producers, with production first coming online in the 1960s and reserves totaling about three billion barrels. It is also one of very few countries in Africa bucking a trend of declining oil production, with oil output increasing by 25% to reach 350,000 barrels of oil per day in 2018. This makes Congo the third biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and Angola. New developments in progress are expected to further boost production to 400,000 bopd by 2020.
In addition to oil, Congo also offers tremendous gas valorization and monetization opportunities in areas such as gas-to-power, urea, gas-to-liquids and methanol, with 300 to 400 billion standard cubic meters of gas reserves for the coming 20 years.
The AEC hopes that Congo’s entry into OPEC will allow the central African nation to develop stronger bilateral relations with other hydrocarbons producing nations, and facilitate the flow of investments into Congo as the country implements its new Hydrocarbons Code and is preparing a Gas Code to structure its gas value chain.
