After a decline in global crude production activity in 2020owing to COVID outbreak, the oil group Maurel & Prom (M&P), a subsidiary of the Indonesian hydrocarbon leader Pertamina, plans to increase its production in Gabon in 2021. To achieve this objective, the The group intends to restart drilling on its Ezanga permit in Gabon.

“M&P is working on the preparation of the development drilling campaign which will restore the production potential of the fields, and which is scheduled to start in the summer,  ” says the group in its activity report for the first quarter of 2021.

However, the resumption of drilling for this permit remains conditional, according to the group, on the lifting of production quotas imposed by OPEC on its member countries. Because, because of this constraint, the production on the field was limited to 15,200 barrels / d, we learn in the report which specifies that during the first quarter of 2021, the production on the Ezanga permit was is raised to 15,120 barrels / d almost unchanged compared to the last quarter of 2020 (15,096 barrels / d).

It is also because of these OPEC constraints that Maurel and Prom’s oil production on the Ezanga permit throughout 2020 recorded a drop of 15% to stabilize at 16,896 barrels. per day compared to 21,120 barrels per day in 2019.

These constraints arise in a difficult context for the oil markets which, in 2020, were severely disrupted due to the slowdown in economic activity caused by the Covid-19 epidemic. This situation resulted in the drop of 1.2% to 10,766 million metric tons of oil production in Gabon during this period, according to the sectoral conjuncture note of the Directorate General of the Economy and tax policy.