Eq.Guinea sees oil output up to 400,000 bpd in 2009

CAPE TOWN, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Equatorial Guinea's oil production is likely to rise about 5 percent to an average of 400,000 barrels per day next year, an official in the African nation's energy department said on Wednesday.

"It will probably be about 400,000 barrels (per day)," Diosdado Engono Bengono, director general of hydrocarbons in the nation's ministry of mines, industry and energy, told Reuters at an oil conference in Cape Town.

Equatorial Guinea, sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer after Nigeria and Angola, is pumping about 380,000 barrels per day. Output has risen sharply since the discovery of massive offshore deposits in the 1990s. (Reporting by Paul Simao)