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Vol. 71/No. 24      June 18, 2007

 
French company presses for
bigger share of Africa’s oil
 
BY SAM MANUEL  
WASHINGTON, June 1—Competition over control of African oil among the largest oil companies based in the imperialist countries sharpened last month as France’s Total announced plans to raise annual production by 5 percent over the next four years.

That would put the company’s annual worldwide production at 3 million barrels a day. African production is expected to account for two-thirds of that growth and soon replace Europe as Total’s top production source, Jean Privey, president of Total’s exploration and production in Africa, told the Wall Street Journal.

Total is the third-largest foreign oil producer in Nigeria, first in Gabon, and second in Cameroon. It holds concessions in Congo-Brazzaville and North African countries, including Libya and Algeria. The company’s annual African oil production in 2006 was 719,000 barrels per day. Last year it was second on the continent after ExxonMobil, which produced 780,000 barrels per day.

Total bolstered its oil presence in Africa with the acquisition in 2000 of Elf Aquitaine, which began oil projects in French colonies in the 1930s. Total also got a boost in the 1980s when it obtained concessions for deep-water offshore fields along Angola’s coast in the midst of Luanda’s war against an invasion by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Total’s oil fields in Angola’s Block 3 hold an estimated 1 billion barrels. Dalia, a field in Block 17, is already pumping 240,000 barrels a day. Pazflor, a field in the same Block, is expected to yield 200,000 barrels per day. Another 850,000 barrels per day are expected from the CLOV fields, which should be ready after 2010.

Oil production in Africa is made even more attractive by the signing of production-sharing arrangements in which the company’s investment is totally reimbursed with barrels of oil.  
 
 
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