With details for Angola’s 2025 licensing round announced earlier this week, African exploration markets are making a push for upstream investment by deploying more attractive terms and offerings for global investors. Angola's upcoming bid round offers 29 opportunities in hydrocarbon-rich basins, minimizing financial risk for exploratory companies. The process is transparent, efficient, and offers flexible contracts, making it an attractive investment prospect.

Ongoing and planned licensing rounds in 2025 – as well as the evaluation of work program obligations and contractual competitiveness – will be a key focus of the Invest in African Energy (IAE) 2025 Forum in Paris in May 2025, which returns for its third edition to showcase Africa’s energy investment and partnership opportunities. The forum will highlight available oil and gas acreage as several African countries – including South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya and Libya – are expected to launch new rounds in 2025. Discussions will also take place on how African upstream markets can strengthen their contractual and fiscal terms and attract a broad range of exploration companies to prospective acreage.

Angola’s upcoming bid round aims to do just this – according to its latest announcement, the ANPG will launch a limited tender in the first quarter of next year featuring nine offshore blocks in the Kwanza and Benguela basins. Additionally, the country has four onshore blocks available, 11 blocks on permanent offer and five marginal fields open for participation – representing the first marginal field round in the country. Marginal fields are located within producing blocks with proven petroleum systems, including ExxonMobil’s Block 15 – one of the largest oil-producing blocks in Angola – and bp’s Block 18, home to the Greater Plutonio Development. The fields can be awarded individually, which demonstrates Angola’s commitment to maximizing the full scope of its hydrocarbon resources and attracting juniors and independents, in addition to major explorers. Angola’s introduction of fiscal reforms that halve tax royalties and income tax requirements for marginal discoveries also serve as a model for other African producers looking to attract investment to marginal resources.

In addition to block opportunities, the call for enhanced seismic and sub-surface data in Africa’s mature and frontier markets will be a central focus of the IAE Forum in Paris. In Angola, the ANPG is seeking to accelerate research and evaluation activities – particularly in sedimentary basins – and expand geological knowledge of new and existing hydrocarbon reserves, with a view to stimulating short-term production through the development of assets located nearby existing production infrastructure, coupled with mid- to long-term development of marginal fields. African oil and gas markets like Angola carry a high demand for seismic and geophysical companies to enter and support exploration activities, with the forum set to connect relevant companies with seismic data acquisition and processing opportunities.

IAE 2025 (http://apo-opa.co/3XUJaHv) is an exclusive forum designed to facilitate investment between African energy markets and global investors. Taking place May 14-15, 2025 in Paris, the event offers delegates two days of intensive engagement with industry experts, project developers, investors and policymakers. For more information, please visit www.Invest-Africa-Energy.com. To sponsor or participate as a delegate, please contact sales@energycapitalpower.com.