Angolan state oil company Sonangol plans to launch a tender for licences to explore 12 new offshore oil blocks in 2015, state news agency Angop cited Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos as saying on Friday. Seven of the new blocks will be located in the Namibe Basin and the remaining five in the Lower Congo Basin, a Sonangol spokesman told Reuters. Angola is Africa's biggest oil producer after Nigeria, with international majors such as France's Total, Italy's ENI, Britain's BP, and U.S. firms Chevron and Exxon Mobil among the main operators in the country. Angop cited Vasconcelos, who was speaking at an oil conference in Moscow, as reiterating Angola's goal of ramping up production to 2 million barrels per day (mbpd) by 2015, from an average of 1.73 mbpd last year.