British independent Afentra is advancing exploration and appraisal activities across both offshore and onshore Angola simultaneously, positioning the company to make a final investment decision on its most advanced deepwater opportunity by late 2026 or early 2027 while initiating first-generation drilling in the largely dormant Kwanza Basin onshore by 2027.
Afentra’s offshore focus centres on Block 3/24, where the company is operator and is working toward an FID covering the development of up to three of the block’s ten oil and gas discoveries — fields that were originally identified by TotalEnergies nearly two decades ago but were never advanced to development. Chief Executive Officer Paul McDade confirmed the timeline: a final investment decision is targeted by end-2026 or early 2027, with first oil expected toward the end of 2027. The proximity of Block 3/24 to Afentra’s existing producing assets creates operational synergies in terms of shared infrastructure and logistics that improve the development economics.
In parallel, the company is awaiting results from its Pacassa SW well in Block 3/05, expected by July. A second well, Impala, is scheduled to follow. McDade has indicated that if the exploration programme in Block 3/05 confirms approximately 50 million barrels of recoverable oil, the discovery could increase Afentra’s current reserves by around 50 percent in a single campaign — a potential step-change in the company’s resource position that would meaningfully alter its development and financing options.
The onshore Kwanza Basin opportunity represents a longer-dated but strategically significant addition to Afentra’s Angola programme. The basin has seen minimal exploration activity since the 1980s, and Afentra describes itself as assessing the broader basin geology ahead of a planned drilling programme targeting exploration wells from 2027 onward. In a country whose upstream sector has historically been dominated by deep and ultra-deepwater offshore development, meaningful onshore activity in an underexplored basin represents a genuine differentiation of the country’s geological story.
Angola, as Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer, remains a priority destination for upstream investment, and Afentra’s expanding footprint — spanning multiple blocks, both offshore and onshore, in operator and non-operator positions — reflects a deliberate strategy to build a diversified Angola-anchored portfolio rather than a single-asset play.
Source: angolanminingoilandgas.com