Angolan billionaire Alberto Almeida de Sousa's Etu Energias to acquire Chevron's blocks for $260 million

Etu Energias is buying Chevron's stakes in two Angolan offshore blocks for $260 million, ending a five-month contest with a London-listed company that had already signed the deal.

The Angolan company will take Chevron's 31% operated interest in Block 14 and its 15.5% non-operated interest in Block 14K, both in the Lower Congo Basin. The base consideration is $260 million in cash with an economic effective date of Jan. 1, 2026. The purchase gives Etu a majority of Block 14 and positions it to take over as operator.

Alberto Almeida de Sousa owns 50% of Etu Energias and is its largest shareholder. He ran the geophysics division at Sonangol, Angola's state oil company, before going into business for himself. Two other former Sonangol executives, Ana da Conceição Nunes and Alexandre Salgado Costa, hold the rest. Edson dos Santos is chief executive.

Chevron had agreed in March to sell the interests to Energean, the London-listed producer built around gas assets in the eastern Mediterranean. Mathios Rigas, Energean's chief executive, called it a historic moment and the company's first move into West Africa. The deal carried contingent payments of up to $250 million linked to production through 2038, taking its potential total to $510 million.

Etu blocked it. As a co-venturer in both blocks, the company held a right of first refusal, which stops a partner selling to an outsider when an existing partner offers to buy on the same terms. It served notice on Chevron in June.

The obstacle was technical rather than financial. Energean pointed out that any assignment to Etu had to be made on the same or equivalent terms, including a condition requiring the buyer to prove it operates at least one producing deepwater asset in water deeper than 300 metres, both within 15 days of signing and at the unconditional date. Whether Etu met that threshold was the question on which its claim rested, and it spent the following months looking for a partner who could satisfy it.

The assets are producing now. Block 14 pumps about 42,000 barrels a day across nine fields, of which 13,000 barrels a day are net to the Chevron interest, with net proven and probable reserves of 28 million barrels. Production runs through the BBLT and Tombua-Landana hubs, which carry spare oil processing capacity along with gas processing and water injection. Energean valued the adjusted underlying earnings attached to the stake at $119 million for 2025.

This is Etu's second use of the mechanism this year. In March it displaced a consortium of BW Energy and Maurel and Prom to take Azule Energy's stakes in the same two blocks.

The pattern fits Angolan policy. The government has made increasing domestic participation in the oil sector an explicit objective and has backed local companies buying producing fields as international majors sell down. Etu Energias is the country's largest private oil company, built by executives who spent decades inside the state system before constructing a private alternative to it.

Eversheds Sutherland advised Etu on the earlier transaction, working through its Portuguese practice with EVC Advogados in Angola and its Dutch office.

Completion depends on regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.