Chevron has announced a new oil and gas condensate discovery offshore Angola, hitting more than 2,000 feet of hydrocarbons in a Block 0 exploration well that could be tied directly into the company’s existing production infrastructure in the country.
The 105-4X well encountered more than 300 feet of net pay in the Pinda reservoir in the Lower Congo Basin, with Chevron describing the reservoir quality as “excellent” in a press release. The company has not yet disclosed an estimate of recoverable resources or potential production.
Chevron subsidiary Cabinda Gulf Oil Company operates Block 0 with a 39.2% interest. Angola’s state-owned Sonangol E&P holds 41%, TotalEnergies 10% and Azule Energy, the BP-Eni joint venture, 9.8%.
Chevron is now evaluating whether 105-4X can be connected to existing Block 0 facilities instead of being developed as a standalone project, potentially reducing both the capital spend and the time needed to bring it online.
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The discovery follows first oil from Chevron’s South N’dola Platform in Block 0 in December 2025, and comes less than two weeks after Sonangol confirmed strong appraisal results at Katambi-2 in Angola’s offshore Block 24.
Another commercially viable discovery could help Angola reverse the long decline of its oil industry, which at one point produced close to 2 million barrels per day. Production has stabilized at around 1.1 million bpd after falling below 1 million bpd last year, with new fiscal terms and exploration incentives drawing investment back into mature and frontier acreage.
Chevron’s Angola find plays into its aggressive return to African exploration. Since late 2024 alone, Chevron has seen three near-field discoveries in Nigeria and is preparing additional drilling across Angola, Namibia and other West African basins. In Namibia, it plans to drill the Nabba-1X well before the end of 2026.
What Angola has that other frontiers don’t, however, is infrastructure already in place to turn a discovery into production.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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