Boston, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/12/2014 -- Although the start of a number of small fields and continued interest in West Africa's deepwater are positive trends for Equatorial Guinea's oil and gas sector, the temporary recovery in oil production will gave way to gradual downtrend, placing the country's heavily oil-dependent economy at risk. While new discoveries could to support an expansion of the country's LNG export capacity, uncertainty over the market and infrastructure has rendered investment decisions repeatedly delayed. Notwithstanding the possibility of new discoveries, we expect both oil and gas production in the West African nation to gradually head lower over the course of the decade.

The key trends and developments in Equatorial Guinea's oil and gas sector are:

- Since having peaked in 2005 at 375,477b/d, oil production in Equatorial Guinea has failed to engineer a strong enough recovery to permanently return to growth. While output fell to 297,000b/d in 2011, volumes have since managed notable gains on the back of the start of smaller fields offshore. We estimate production averaged 346,000b/d for 2013 and will continue to make incremental gains before peaking at 376,000b/d in 2015.
- The start of new fields like Carla and later Alen will deliver gains over the course of our forecast period, but in our view are not enough to sustain the recovery in production over the longer term. While we see some upside from prospects under appraisal, such as Noble Energy's Diega and potential liquids from Ophir Energy's gas-rich Block R, we do not believe development of these prospects alone will be able to offset falling volumes from currently producing fields. Beyond 2017, we anticipate a steady decline in production unless further investment is made in exploration and production (E&P) with new discoveries being brought online.
- Equatorial Guinea recently announced the awarding of a number of onshore and offshore blocks to small and mid-sized players. Traditional international oil companies (IOCs) and players from Brazil, Africa, and Asia were among the winners. In announcing the awards, officials said other blocks would be put up for auction as additional 3D seismic data was made available. Supported by high prices, we expect deepwater drilling to remain a key strength of the country's oil and gas sector on the back of rising interest in West Africa's offshore potential.
- Gas production has been gradually decreasing after peaking in 2011 (6.9bcm) and reached an estimated 6.5bcm in 2013.We forecast the production to fall further to 6.3bcm in 2014 and continue this downward trend over our 10-year forecast period unless more investment is made in existing fields and new prospects. While a number of small liquids-rich discoveries are due to come online associated gas from these developments is largely destined for reinjection at the well-site rather than for use to supply domestic or export markets.

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