Angola’s emergence as a serious player in the global oil sector has been underlined by the publication of its latest production figures. After several years of slow output growth, the fruits of the multi-billion dollar deepwater investment programme are finally feeding through. Thus, production reached 1.3 million barrels a day during the final quarter of 2005. With the new deepwater fields now coming into production, the government’s target of producing 2 million barrels a day by 2008 now seems eminently within reach. In the meantime, official Angolan government figures indicate that oil production averaged 1.25 million barrels a day during the course of 2005, a steep jump on the year before. In addition, the government’s estimate of proven oil reserves has finally been increased from 5.4 billion barrels to 12.4 billion barrels. This shows that, as sub-Saharan Africa’s second biggest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola is in an excellent position to overtake countries such as Libya and Algeria in the table of oil powers on the continent as a whole.