From Bloomberg

Ivory Coast Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan said his nation will boost oil production within five years to 200,000 barrels a day, rivaling neighboring Ghana as stability returns to a country racked by a decade of turmoil.

The West African nation wants oil companies to increase exploration and drilling offshore after output more than halved to about 30,000 barrels a day because of technical problems, he said in an interview Jan. 6. Ghana pumps about 100,000 barrels a day and wants to more than double output to 250,000 by 2021. Ghana is West Africa’s fourth-largest producer, after Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

“We have about 50 oil blocks of which half have been awarded,” Duncan said in the commercial capital, Abidjan. “We expect to add at least five wells a year.

Written by Baudelaire Mieu and Pauline Bax | Read more at Bloomberg