BP, Kosmos Secure Five West Africa Blocks

BP and its partner US independent Kosmos Energy have been awarded five new exploration blocks offshore West Africa.

Cote d'Ivoire announced December 20 that it has awarded Kosmos and BP five new blocks, in the framework of an agreement concluded with state-run upstream company Petroci.

The blocks are CI-526, CI-602, CI-603, CI-707 and CI-708, announced the government’s spokesman Bruno Kone in Abidjan. Petroci will hold a 10% interest in each of the awarded blocks, while interests of Kosmos and BP were not specified. Nevertheless, this is the significant acreage award to the two foreign firms in this part of the Gulf of Guinea which has significant oil and gas resource potential.

The government in Abidjan hopes the country will become as actively explored as Ghana, and also Senegal and Mauritania where Kosmos and BP made major gas discoveries that they plan to leverage into floating LNG projects. In Ghana, Kosmos Energy has an interest in the Tullow-operated TEN field offshore Ghana, which was at the heart of a ruling by ITLOS last September which decided that its outer fringe belonged to Ghana rather than Cote d'Ivoire.

Tullow in October was awarded a 90% interest in the CI 518, CI519, CI301 and CI302 onshore blocks in Cote d'Ivoire. SECI, a subsidiary of French group Bouygues, also a few weeks ago inked contracts for two blocks in the country.

Kosmos meanwhile was awarded an 80% interest in three licences offshore Equatorial Guinea in October, in conjunction with its state-owned producer GEPetrol (20%). BP and Kosmos jointly asked the Sao Tome e Principe government earlier in October to be jointly awarded offshore blocks 10 and 13 there; that country is a neighbour of Equatorial Guinea.