Senegal and Mauritania Keep Explorers Busy
UK Cairn Energy has drilled a second successful appraisal well offshore Senegal that flowed oil at a maximum 5,400 b/d, with sustained flows over several hours of more than 4,000 b/d. The “SNE-3” well, drilled 95 km out to sea on the Sangomar Offshore block, yielded “multiple samples of oil and gas recovered to surface from wireline logs and drill stem tests,” it said March 9.
Cairn is operator with 40% in three Senegal blocks -- Sangomar Deep, Sangomar Offshore and Rufisque -- alongside ConocoPhillips' 35%, Australia’s FAR's 15%, and the 10% held by state Petrosen. Together the 3 blocks cover 4,490km2. Cairn CEO Simon Thomson expressed “delight” at the results from its SNE field, which FAR estimates to hold some 200mn bbls of recoverable oil. The rig used on SNE-3 will now test the nearby Bellatrix prospect.
SNE is an oil field. However major gas reserves have recently been found in this Atlantic Margin area straddling Senegal's maritime border with Mauritania and roughly 150 km north of Cairn’s latest well.
Kosmos Energy announced a “significant gas discovery” on January 27 2016 from its Guembeul-1 exploration well, in the northern part of Senegal’s St. Louis Offshore Profond licence, in which New York-listed Kosmos as operator holds 60%, state Petrosen 10%, and Frank Timis’s Timis Corp 30%.
That find was 5 km south of its Tortue-1 discovery in Mauritania block C-8, some 285 km southwest of the capital Nouakchott, announced in April 2015 and since renamed Ahmeyim which in turn was extended by a second gas discovery 60 km to the north last November. Kosmos has a 90% interest in the licence with Mauritanian state SMHPM 10%.
These finds enabled Kosmos to raise its estimate of the cross-border ‘Greater Tortue Complex’ gross gas resource to 17 trillion ft3 (482bn m3), from 14 trillion ft3. In January too, Kosmos, Petrosen and SMHPM agreed on basic principles for developing Greater Tortue. The rig that drilled Guembeul-1 is now destined to drill a delineation well, Ahmeyim-2, in the southern part of Mauritania’s Block C-8.
Chevron has acquired northwest Africa offshore acreage, and has an option for a 30% farm-in to Tortue, provided it pays most of the Tortue-1 well well costs. In early 2015, it also acquired a 30% interest in the C8, C12 and C13 blocks offshore Mauritania from operator Kosmos. Chevron operates three blocks offshore Morocco totaling 29,218 km² west of Agadir – Cap Rhir Deep, Cap Cantin Deep and Cap Walidia Deep – in which it farmed out a 30% to Qatar Petroleum in early 2016, reducing its own stake to 45% with Moroccan state ONHYM retaining 25%.
Cairn also has a 35% interest in the C19 block off Mauritania, operated by the UK’s Chariot Oil & Gas. More controversially, Kosmos, Cairn and ONHYM are partners in the 22,267 km2 Cap Boujdour permit offshore Western Sahara, a contested territory that Morocco administers, where it made a non-commercial discovery last year. Cairn also has operated blocks offshore Morocco proper but has yet to declare any oil finds commercial there.
Mark Smedley