SLB in Angola, Central and East Africa

Innovating the energy tech Africa needs.

For us, innovation doesn’t just mean engineering the best solutions. It means skillfully building a pathway to the outcomes—the future—we want to see. And that’s a future of reliable access to more affordable, more secure, and cleaner energy.

SLB in Africa

Africa's balancing act is our balancing act

Overview

For over 90 years, SLB’s historical footprint across Angola, Central, and East Africa has been instrumental in our commitment to accelerating decarbonization while delivering affordable and accessible energy in Africa.

Operating in over 10 countries, we work collaboratively with local stakeholders, leveraging the pioneering spirit of our people to produce lower-carbon oil and gas while developing and scaling new energy technologies to accelerate the energy transition.

From the first Delfi deployment in Angola to the first autonomous drilling in the Republic of Congo among others, we are committed to fostering partnerships that drive sustainable growth, foster innovation, and support socio-economic development.

We do this while remaining steadfast in our resolve to be the partner of choice in the region.

Decarbonizing

Striking a balance between expanding energy access and reducing carbon emissions requires unprecedented levels of innovation. And with approximately 600 million people still without electricity, our region grapples daily with the dual challenge of meeting increasing energy demands while addressing the urgent need for decarbonization.

This is where SLB plays a pivotal role. By leveraging global expertise and adopting advanced tech—including best practices in carbon capture and storage (CCS)—we're committed to sustainably exploring the region's vast resources.

Our deployment of Ora™ deep transient testing in Angola, for example, showcases how advanced testing methods can significantly reduce both emissions and logistical constraints. But these efforts aren’t accomplished in isolation.

Local collaborations and initiatives are essential to advancing our lower-carbon agenda. The National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia, for instance, has partnered with SLB on the shared objectives of sustainability, decarbonization, and the exploration of new energy opportunities. Some of the key components of this collaboration are actions such as carbon footprint measurement, decarbonization planning, CCS, and green hydrogen production.

Oil and Gas

More than 60% of global production comes from mature assets, with Rystad Energy predicting the percentage to reach nearly 80% by 2030. To meet this growing demand, the oil and gas industry is increasingly relying on well interventions, many of which are constrained by the operational challenges that come with reactive and isolated approaches.

Take Angola, for example, which has the ambitious target of producing more than 1.0 million barrels each day until 2030. Given the decline rate of 10% YOY and anticipated low drilling activity, Angola requires a step change in how it assures performance if it wants to arrest decline.

These production challenges are complex, and no single company has the solution for all of them—inclusive and sustainable partnerships are integral to delivering the scalable solutions Angola and its neighbors require. Hence SLB launching its first performance center in Africa, a collaborative hub located in Luanda, Angola. Here, industry stakeholders can access innovative solutions across digital, artificial intelligence, oil and gas, and even new energy.

New Energy

Despite representing nearly 20% of the global population, Africa contributes less than 3% of the world's energy-related CO₂ emissions. This disparity highlights the continent’s energy needs, along with its potentially significant growth in energy demand.

What does this mean for us? There’s a substantial opportunity to scale new energy systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and SLB is leading the way. By integrating advanced tech and data-driven insights, we're enhancing the efficiency and reliability of energy systems—not only to address immediate energy requirements but also to support a more sustainable energy future.

A key aspect of this initiative includes offering our technical expertise to explore and develop natural resources, such as geothermal in East Africa, to diversify the local energy mix and promote sustainable sources. We’re also venturing into innovative areas such as green helium production, especially in Tanzania where we’ve achieved sustained flow rates of up to 5.5% helium.

The dedicated exploration of these and other vital resources supports sectors well beyond the energy industry—and the broader vision of unlocking Africa's full energy potential.

Digital at Scale

Whether it's fast-tracking the path from exploration to first oil, arresting production decline, or supporting long-term recovery, digitalization is set to drive the efficiency, production, and sustainable practices Africa needs. And standing as a pioneer is SLB.

We’ve taken the lead in scaling digital integration and transformation in exploration and production across the region. From when we first deployed our Delfi™ platform, SLB has been harnessing the power of digital to generate real-time data and insights that can improve local decision making. This includes moving subsurface workflows to the cloud in countries such as Angola, expediting the process from experiment to scalable solutions in Namibia, and allowing assets to generate immediate value to better meet Africa's increasing energy demands.

In 2024, SLB took things a step further by using advanced tech (including artificial intelligence) to deliver Africa's first autonomously drilled well in Congo. This required precise navigation through complex geological formations and optimized drilling processes that reduced time, cost, and emissions. It was a collaborative effort that demonstrated Africa's ability to adopt and deploy cutting-edge tech, thereby setting the stage for future innovations and sustainable development across the continent.