In December 2023, Angola stunned global energy markets by announcing it would leave OPEC after 16 years of membership. The decision followed months of tension over production quotas. Angola had been assigned a daily output cap of 1.1 million barrels of oil - far below what Luanda considered fair. At the time of its withdrawal, however, Angola's production had already collapsed by almost 40% in 8 years, sliding from 1.7 million b/d to 1.1 million b/d. The decline owed less to OPEC than to geology and high government intake: mature fields were running dry, and new investment had slowed.

Hopes that leaving OPEC would allow a resurgence quickly faded. The government stopped publishing official output figures after November 2023, just weeks before its departure became effective in January 2024, but exports tell the story. Because Angola refines very little oil domestically (with only one operational refinery of 60,000 b/d capacity) and all of the production is offshore, seaborne shipments mirror total output. In 2022, the last year of full reporting, the gap between exports (including deliveries to the Luanda refinery) and overall production was barely 25,000 b/d, and exports have hovered around 1.1 million since 2021. Freedom from quotas brought no boost in output, the volumes remained flat.

The main reason is straightforward: Angola's producing wells are simply running out of oil. The already developed fields are old, and modest discoveries over the past decade have not offset depletion. Of the country's 20 largest fields, only 5 remain below 70% maturity. The flagship Block 15 Kizomba complex operated by ExxonMobil produces about 200,000 b/d but is 85% depleted. The second largest TotalEnergies' Kaombo project in Block 32 (around 150,000 b/d) is around 60% mature. With decline rates high and reservoirs getting dry, Angola's structural problem is in large part geological, not political.

Naturally, Angola's oil story is far from over. Numerous offshore blocks are still undeveloped, and exploration in others has barely started, sustaining the interest of international operators. The upstream industry remains dominated by a few big players: Azule Energy - a joint venture between BP and Eni formed in 2022 - has become the country's largest producer, accounting for around 230,000 b/d. Sonangol, the state-owned oil company, ranked second with roughly 200,000 b/d, while ExxonMobil continued to run the vast Kizomba complex in Block 15, and TotalEnergies maintained a broad oil-and-gas portfolio across several deepwater blocks.