SBM Offshore’s return to AEW, which takes place from October 12–16 in Cape Town, is expected to draw significant industry attention as operators, financiers and EPC contractors evaluate the next wave of floating production infrastructure across the Atlantic Basin. With more than 20 years of experience in Africa and over $31 billion in contract backlog globally, the company remains one of the world’s most influential FPSO suppliers.

The Sponsorship follows several major milestones announced during 2025 and 2026. On May 26, the American Bureau of Shipping approved SBM Offshore’s seawater intake riser technology developed alongside Shell. The system pumps cold seawater from depths of 700m to FPSO topsides, reducing onboard cooling energy demand and improving emissions performance for future African and South American projects.

The company’s financial position strengthened considerably following the $2.32 billion sale of FPSO One Guyana to ExxonMobil in February 2026. The transaction helped drive a 216% year-on-year increase in Q1 2026 directional revenue to $3.5 billion while reducing SBM Offshore’s net debt from $5.7 billion to $3.2 billion by March 21, 2026.

In March 2026, ExxonMobil awarded SBM Offshore front-end engineering and design contracts for the Longtail development in Guyana. The proposed FPSO is expected to feature the world’s highest gas-handling capacity ever deployed on a floating production vessel, processing 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas and 250,000 barrels of condensate daily.

Across Africa, SBM Offshore continues expanding its offshore footprint. In Angola, the company signed multi-year extensions in December 2025 with Esso Exploration Angola for FPSO Mondo and FPSO Saxi Batuque in Block 15, extending operations through 2032. Brownfield upgrades and life-extension works commenced in early 2026 to support declining reservoir pressure management and maintain environmental compliance standards.

The company also finalized a share purchase agreement with Equatorial Guinea’s national oil company GEPetrol in December 2025, restructuring regional asset ownership and supporting localized operational transitions. The FPSO Aseng formally exited SBM Offshore’s lease-and-operate fleet during the same period as management responsibilities shifted toward Equatoguinean entities.

Namibia retains a central focus of SBM Offshore’s African growth strategy. The company is actively competing for TotalEnergies’ Venus FPSO contract in the Orange Basin, one of Africa’s largest recent offshore discoveries with estimated resources of roughly 2 billion barrels. SBM Offshore has expanded its Cape Town commercial engineering workforce while positioning its standardized technologies for upcoming South Atlantic developments.

“SBM Offshore’s participation at this year’s event reflects the growing momentum behind Africa’s deepwater industry and the critical role FPSO technology will play in unlocking new production. From Angola’s mature offshore hubs to Namibia’s frontier discoveries, SBM Offshore continues to demonstrate the technical expertise, operational scale and long-term investment approach needed to advance Africa’s next generation of energy projects,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman, African Energy Chamber.

Looking ahead, SBM Offshore aims to combine frontier expansion with lower-emission offshore production systems. Through partnerships with SLB and Cognite, the company is integrating industrial AI platforms to its global fleet while scaling standardized hull construction to accelerate project delivery timelines across Africa and Latin America.

Against this backdrop, the Carbon Markets Africa Summit (CMAS) that is organised by VUKA Group has released its official 2026 programme, outlining how Africa’s carbon markets can move beyond frameworks into execution, investment and transactions. The summit will take place from 13–15 October 2026 in Kigali, Rwanda, hosted by the Ministry of Environment of Rwanda, with UNDP and the African Development Bank (AfDB) as host organisations, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) as host partner, and AUDA-NEPAD as the strategic institutional partner.

Positioned as a pan-African marketplace, CMAS connects policy, project pipelines, capital and buyers in a structured environment focused on enabling real deal flow.

This year’s programme reflects a changing market dynamic, one where integrity, quality and transaction readiness are becoming decisive.

“Carbon markets are entering a more selective and operational phase. The question is no longer whether Africa has a role to play, but whether the continent can bring forward credible projects, enabling frameworks and market infrastructure to transact at scale,” said Emmanuelle Nicholls, Project Lead. “CMAS 2026 is designed as a response to that moment – connecting the actors, pipelines and capital needed to move from ambition to execution.”

Within this evolving context, the summit places strong emphasis on the foundations required to scale markets responsibly. As Estherine Fotabong, Director at AUDA-NEPAD, notes, “Africa’s carbon markets must be built on integrity, equity, and continental coordination so that carbon finance delivers real value for communities, ecosystems, and sustainable development across the continent.”

A programme built for execution

The CMAS 2026 programme spans the full carbon market value chain from policy and Article 6 implementation to project development, finance and transactions. Key highlights include the keynote opening session on delivering projects, capital and transactions at scale, a high-level dialogue on trust and market readiness, ministerial and technical roundtables, and sessions focused on buyer demand, investor priorities and deal structuring.

A central feature is a curated pipeline of African carbon projects across nature-based solutions, regenerative agriculture, carbon removals, waste-to-value and blue carbon, presented through project showcases, case studies and investment-ready deal rooms.

The programme also includes solution labs and technical workshops addressing critical bottlenecks—including Article 6 and CORSIA implementation, early-stage finance, MRV systems and project bankability, alongside live demonstrations of digital carbon infrastructure, ensuring focus on practical market development and delivery.

CMAS 2026 is hosted in Rwanda, a country advancing carbon market frameworks under Article 6, and takes place at a pivotal moment as global markets increasingly prioritise integrity, quality and real delivery at scale.

South Africa is pursuing one of the most significant upstream overhauls in its history, anchored by a new law that gives oil and gas their own regulatory regime for the first time. The reforms position the host nation as both a destination for exploration capital and a future producer along an Atlantic margin that has drawn the world’s largest oil companies to the region.

At the center of the shift is the Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Act (UPRDA), which President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law in October 2024. The Act separates petroleum from the mining statute that has long regulated both sectors. It also creates a single petroleum right covering exploration and production along with a 20% carried interest for the state. The UPRDA awaits a presidential proclamation to take effect, and implementing regulations that went through a further round of industry comment in early 2026 are now being finalized.

Mantashe has emerged as the most forceful advocate for accelerating the sector. He has long-argued that South Africa must shift from importing refined products to producing its own, warning that dependence on foreign supply leaves the economy exposed to global price shocks. This shift becomes increasingly more importance in the current global climate, where supply security has become a major challenge – particularly for import-reliance economies such as South Africa. As such, Mantashe has repeatedly pressed for faster licensing and fewer legal delays to exploration. AEW 2026 is a key platform to bring this discussion to a global audience.

“South Africa has the geology for exploration. Now it is building the regulatory certainty it needs to turn discoveries into bankable projects,” said NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “A clear petroleum framework and a credible state partner are what international capital needs to commit to the Orange Basin.”

Offshore, TotalEnergies – operator of Block 3B/4B in the Orange Basin – is preparing to begin drilling in South African waters in 2026 pending final regulatory approvals. The acreage sits on trend with the Venus discovery in neighboring Namibia, where TotalEnergies is developing the basin’s first oil project.

Onshore, momentum is building in Mpumalanga, where gas developer Kinetiko Energy’s Amersfoort project has logged sustained high-flow results and is advancing plans for an LNG pilot plant. Mantashe has also signaled that government is moving to lift the long-standing moratorium on shale gas development, with the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PASA) estimating recoverable Karoo reserves at 209 tcf.

Mantashe is also expected to report on successes of the South African National Petroleum Company (SANPC), the state entity formed in May 2025 through the merger of PetroSA, iGas and the Strategic Fuel Fund. Positioned as the country’s petroleum champion, SANPC is intended to anchor state participation across the value chain as South Africa works toward 6 GW of gas-fired power by 2030.

As AEW 2026 prepares to convene policymakers, investors and operators at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from October 12-16, Mantashe’s address carries added weight as the host nation’s signal to the market. His message is expected to be direct: South Africa is open for upstream investment and ready to move from potential to production.