Ivory Coast aims to roughly double oil and gas output by 2020 as it pushes for foreign investment in offshore exploration, the head of state-owned oil and gas company Petroci said on July 13.

While it has developed natural gas deposits for domestic consumption, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy has ignored its energy sector for decades as the government concentrated on developing agricultural exports.

Authorities are now seeking to develop offshore reserves in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.

"Today we have around 60 blocks. We've awarded about 20," Ibrahima Diaby, Petroci's managing director, said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Ivory Coast's capital, Yamoussoukro.

"With current exploration, our ambition is to reach 200,000 BOE [barrels of oil equivalent] in 2020," he said.

That's around twice the current output levels.

Companies either currently conducting exploration in Ivory Coast, or preparing to do so, include France's Total, U.S. firms Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC), and Africa-focused Tullow Oil.

Russia's second-largest oil producer, Lukoil, withdrew from its Ivorian operations earlier this year.

Ivory Coast has also been expanding its existing oil and gas production. It has one of West Africa's most reliable power grids, with few blackouts, allowing it to export electricity to its neighbors. But since 2012, an economic boom has seen demand balloon by around 10% annually, straining capacity.

Diaby said Canadian Natural Resources and Ivory Coast's Foxtrot International had raised natural gas production to 250 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), up from 220 MMcf/d three years ago. Ivory Coast's crude oil output, meanwhile, has risen to 53,000 barrels per day (Mbbl/d), up from about 30 Mbbl/d last year, he said.

The country is also pushing forward with plans to begin importing LNG to supplement domestic supply to its gas-fired power plants.

Deals are still being finalized, and Diaby declined to give further details, but said the first LNG shipments were expected to arrive in 2018.

Houston-based Endeavor Energy said in March that it was seeking to secure financing by the end of the year for a $900 million gas-fired power project in Ivory Coast that would be fuelled by imported LNG.