Gabon’s oil sector is showing an unusual combination of strong prices, resilient investment and persistent fiscal pressure. The first-half results of Maurel & Prom illustrate the problem clearly: the value generated by Gabonese oil production is rising with higher prices, but the State still faces a difficult task in turning that higher value into a durable source of public revenue.
Maurel & Prom, whose largest single asset is in Gabon, reported consolidated group revenue of $366 million for the first half of 2026, up 27% from a year earlier. Group EBITDA rose 63% to $227 million, while net income reached $191 million, boosted by below-the-line contributions including M&P’s equity-accounted Venezuelan interest and a payment related to the earlier disposal of its stake in Seplat. The main driver of the improvement was the average oil sale price, which rose 46% to $103.80 a barrel. Royalties and production taxes across the group increased from $34 million to $43 million.
These are group figures, spanning Gabon, Tanzania, Angola, Colombia and Venezuela, and they demonstrate the strength of the current oil-price environment. But they also expose a deeper problem for Gabon. Higher prices can increase the value of every barrel without necessarily creating a comparable improvement in the State’s fiscal position. The issue is therefore not simply how much oil rent Gabon captures, but how effectively its oil economy converts that rent into stable public revenue.
The problem starts with a mature oil base
Gabon is not an emerging oil frontier where a new wave of giant discoveries can quickly transform production. Its most important assets are mature, meaning that maintaining output increasingly depends on development spending, workovers, enhanced recovery and new drilling.
Maurel & Prom’s Ezanga permit provides a useful example. The company’s 80%-interest production from the permit averaged 13,896 barrels a day in the first half of 2026, broadly stable compared with the second half of 2025. The company has described the asset as mature and said its objective is primarily to maintain current production levels, with upside depending on exploration results.
This changes the economics of the oil boom. When prices rise, Gabon can receive more value from existing production, but higher prices alone do not solve the longer-term problem of replacing declining reserves. A mature producer needs continuous investment simply to preserve the production base that generates government revenue.
Gabon is still attracting capital, but the capital has a job to do
The Maurel & Prom figures also require a more nuanced reading of investment flows.
Gabon remains the company’s largest destination for development capital. In the first half of 2026, M&P spent $87 million on development in Gabon, compared with $18 million in Tanzania, $17 million in Angola and $11 million in Colombia. Exploration spending in Gabon, by contrast, was only $2 million, against $7 million in Tanzania.
The distinction between development and exploration is important, even if the timing of exploration work can be uneven within a year. M&P is clearly still investing in Gabon. The current spending pattern, however, places greater emphasis on sustaining and developing existing output than on exploration for a new generation of large-scale production.
The company’s own 2026 plan illustrates the challenge. It had initially budgeted $130 million for development in Gabon and another $20 million for exploration, including seismic work and exploration drilling on Ezanga. Some of that exploration spending may fall in the second half, but the structure of the program highlights the difficulty of extending production from a mature asset.
Gabon therefore faces a more complicated competition for capital than simply attracting an investor once. It must remain attractive enough for an international operator to continue allocating capital to mature assets when that same capital can be deployed across a global portfolio.
That portfolio is particularly relevant in the case of Maurel & Prom because the company is controlled by Indonesia’s state-owned oil and gas group Pertamina through Pertamina Internasional Eksplorasi dan Produksi, which held 71.09% of M&P as of December 31, 2025. This does not mean Pertamina is pulling investment out of Gabon; M&P’s development spending shows the opposite. But it does mean Gabon’s oil assets compete for capital within a wider international energy portfolio. Tanzania, Angola and Latin America are not simply distant markets; they are alternative destinations for the same corporate investment capacity.
The fiscal challenge is harder than raising the State’s share
This creates a difficult policy balance for Libreville.
The government has an obvious incentive to capture more of the upside when oil prices are high. But the more important question is whether additional fiscal extraction can be achieved without weakening the economics needed to maintain mature fields and encourage exploration.
Production-sharing agreements are designed precisely around this balance. They determine how output is divided between cost recovery, government participation and profit oil, rather than simply applying a single tax to corporate profits. In its financial statements, M&P describes PSAs as agreements that establish production-sharing and taxation terms with the host government or its state-owned representative. That makes the Gabonese challenge structural. The government needs enough of the rent to finance public spending, while operators need sufficient returns to justify the capital required to keep mature assets producing. There is no automatic solution in either direction.
Oil revenue is not the same as fiscal space
The pressure on Gabon’s public finances makes this distinction concrete.
In July, the government revised the 2026 budget and cut projected revenues by 22% to about $5.68 billion. The financing gap widened to approximately $1.61 billion, while the revised budget authorized up to about $1.5 billion in international borrowing. The deterioration has raised concerns among investors about Gabon’s push for a new IMF program, according to people following the talks.
The revised budget also shows that higher oil prices have not translated into a straightforward improvement in the government’s revenue outlook: projected profit-oil revenue fell by about 30%, while mining tax receipts also declined sharply. The IMF has stressed that oil windfalls should be treated as temporary and used to strengthen fiscal buffers and reduce debt.
This is the paradox at the center of Gabon’s oil economy. A higher oil price can sharply improve the economics of an operator such as Maurel & Prom, but it does not automatically create equivalent fiscal space for the government. Revenue collection depends on the structure of the production-sharing system, production volumes, tax obligations, the timing of payments and the government’s ability to convert petroleum-related claims into usable cash.
The treatment of VAT receivables from the Gabonese State illustrates the complexity. M&P has disclosed that, following a 2021 agreement with the government, its VAT receivable can be recovered through the production-sharing mechanism. The significance is broader than the accounting itself: transactions between the State and oil companies can involve offsets and in-kind mechanisms rather than an immediate cash transfer to the Treasury.
That distinction matters for fiscal management because a reduction in the State’s liabilities is not necessarily the same thing as an increase in immediately available budgetary cash.
Gabon’s oil problem is becoming a fiscal one
The Maurel & Prom case therefore points to a problem bigger than one company or one production-sharing agreement.
Gabon still has a valuable oil sector, and the current price environment is providing substantial support to operators. But the country is increasingly dependent on a mature production base whose future requires continued private investment, even as public finances remain under pressure and the government needs more predictable revenue to reduce its reliance on borrowing.
That leaves Libreville facing a difficult equation. It needs to capture more value from oil without discouraging the investment needed to produce it; maintain production without treating high prices as a substitute for reserve replacement; and turn volatile petroleum rents into fiscal space that can support investment and debt reduction.
Maurel & Prom’s first-half results show why this is difficult. The company can generate significantly more value from Gabonese barrels when prices rise, while the country’s underlying fiscal constraints remain.
For the government, the next stage of oil policy is therefore unlikely to be about simply producing more barrels. It will be about capturing, stabilizing and converting the value of the barrels the country can still produce into a more sustainable fiscal base.
