According to the preliminary transportation plan, released by the financial information agency Bloomberg, Angola is expected to register a drop from the 1.177 million barrels per day expected to be transported in December, proving the drop in oil production and aggravating the impact on public accounts of the second largest producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
In total, Angola should export 35.5 million barrels in January next year, if the shipment program remains unchanged until then.
On Wednesday, the director of the National Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANPG) announced that its program to re-launch oil exploration activity "was delayed" by covid-19, assuming that by 2020 exploration activities "are shy.
"In general, the plans we had for relaunching exploration activity were postponed to later years, since the pandemic imposed some unanticipated variables in which all those involved had to readjust their plans," said the director of the ANPG's Strategic Planning office, Alcides Andrade.
The director, who was speaking at a 'webinar' on "The Cycle of a Petroleum Project" in Luanda, acknowledged that exploratory activities in 2020 "are shy, because of the pandemic, and are relaunched for the years ahead.
"It was a little adjusted to what was our perspective in 2019," he said, recalling that the challenges of the oil sector had an accent on 2014, the year in which there was a sharp drop in the price of a barrel of oil.
This drop in the price of a barrel of oil, the biggest support for the national economy, in 2014, brought several implications for the socio-economic condition of the country, including a financial and exchange crisis and the extension of the economic recession for the fifth consecutive year in 2020.
