Sub-Saharan Africa upstream 2017 in review: Light at the end of the tunnel?

Sub-Saharan Africa was hit hard by the downturn, and the impact of lower oil prices continued to reverberate through upstream. The industry was still in spend reduction mode. Capital expenditure continued to fall and for the first year in over two decades, opex spend exceeded capex. Yet there were signs of recovery as total production increased by 6%, as Nigerian militancy ended while Angola LNG ramped up production. M&A deals were up sharply, headlined by ExxonMobil’s US$2.8 bn entry into Mozambique’s Area 4. This acted as a catalyst for FID on Coral, a landmark moment for large-scale FLNG. Finally, political upheaval in Angola has provided optimism for an uptick in investment in 2018. Our 2017 review of the key exploration, production, investment, fiscal and M&A trends is available in a slide pack (see the downloads section), which also contains links to our top insights and informs published in the past year.