Analysis: Oil majors snap up West African blocks in hunt for next Brazil

Chevron and TotalEnergies are among the oil majors snapping up offshore blocks in West and Southern Africa as compelling geology, regulatory reforms, and the need to restock spur a hunt for the next Brazil. Companies are restocking their oil and gas assets given prospects for fossil fuel demand to stay higher for longer than predicted just a few years ago. “The majors are clearly in something of an acreage reload and have been able to secure large acreage positions,” said David Thomson, vice president of Sub-Saharan Upstream at Welligence energy analytics.

With growth in U.S. shale topping out, other regions are drawing fresh attention, including West and South Africa, with Shell, for example, returning to offshore Angola after a 20-year absence. Of the oil and gas discovered since 2020, some 11%, or about 8.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), has been found along West Africa, most of it oil, said Justin Cochrane, African upstream regional research director for S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The region holds around 14% of the liquids discovered since then, or some 5.6 billion barrels, he added. France’s TotalEnergies has been the most active international player, last September finalising new production-sharing contracts in Nigeria, Congo Brazzaville and Liberia, according to Thomson at Welligence. Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil producer, introduced a presidential decree in late 2024 that included reforms and tax cuts aimed at making mature blocks more investible and spur exploration.

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Angola about a year earlier also quit the OPEC group of oil-producing countries, freeing itself from output curbs. “New exploration, such as in Angola, is important to sustaining production into the 2030s,” Shell said last month as it announced a deal to buy stakes in two undeveloped offshore blocks. Eni-BP joint venture Azule Energy has drilled Angola’s first gas-specific exploration well and found potentially more than 1 trillion cubic feet of gas and up to 100 million barrels of condensate, it said.U.S.

major Chevron entered the promising MSGBC (Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Bissau and Conakry) basin when it added two blocks off Guinea-Bissau in November. “It just adds to a great suite of exploration blocks we have up and down the coast in West Africa, a super prolific area,” Liz Schwarze, Chevron’s vice president for exploration, told Reuters.

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