Equatorial Guinea wants to negotiate with foreign oil companies to ensure it receives more revenues from its rising oil production, which could reach 400,000 barrels per day by next year, a senior minister said.

Since the discovery of major oilfields in the mid-1990s, the former Spanish colony has made a leap to third place in the league of sub-Saharan African oil producers, behind Nigeria and Angola.
Foreign oil investors in the West African country are led by ExxonMobil, which operates the major Zafira field, Amerada Hess and Marathon Oil Corp.
“The 60-something dollars which a barrel of oil costs today is not the price that the Equatorial Guinean government receives because investments must be recovered,” said Miguel Oyono Ndong, first vice prime minister for foreign affairs. “What the government gets is only 20 per cent of this.”
“We have to continue negotiating with oil companies to reach levels which might allow us to benefit substantially from these resources,” said Oyono Ndong, long-term advisor to President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979.
“It is a legitimate claim ... that they pay us a fair price,” he said.
While oil firms have pumped more than $6 billion into the tiny Africa state, the latest United Nation’s development index for this year showed Equatorial Guinea slipping down the list of countries fighting poverty – down 12 places to 121 spot. The government is also focusing on exploiting the gas associated with its oil deposits.