The West-African margin is back in the exploration spotlight, not only because of yesterday’s announcement by Shell to drill more wells on their PEL-39 licence in Namibia – but also because of acreage snapped up in countries that had only limited activity until recently.
In this case, we’re talking about The Gambia, where seven of the eight offshore blocks that make up the offshore were all up for grabs after Far from Australia relinquished A2 and A5 early in 2024, following their campaign that saw two wells drilled (Samo-1 and Bambo-1) without apparent success. The only block that was under licence until recently was A4, but PetroNor relinquished it last month after failing to find a drilling partner. That left the offshore without any licences for a few weeks.
But it not take long for this downward trend to be reversed.
Read more about the FAR drilling campaign here.
A source close to the matter shared that from the end of November, the A2 and A5 blocks are under licence again, for a notable period of 30 years. The new owner is Atlas Oranto, the company run by Arthur Eze from Nigeria. The same company also took hold of some blocks in Liberia recently.
And that’s not the only thing happening. Another industry source shared that a government official from The Gambia at this week’s MSGBC Oil, Gas and Power Conference in Dakar announced that ENI and Ratio Petroleum are close to signing a licence deal as well. Whilst it is not clear yet which blocks this is about, looking at the map and the fields in Senegalese waters further north, one might think it is blocks A1 and A4 that are on the radar. Here, the companies might expect to find lateral equivalents of the Albian base-of-slope turbidite fans or contourites that form the reservoirs in the FAN discovery, or, east of the Cretaceous shelf margin, equivalent structures to Sangomar.
At the recent Africa Energy Week in Cape Town in October, the Petroleum Commission from The Gambia included an informative slide in their talk, showing how the prospects in block A4 match what can be seen in Senegal (see below). In fact, the Rosewood prospect might even be more attractive than FAN, as it experienced less burial, which is known to be a detrimental factor in FAN.
Block A1 was previously held by bp, but was relinquished in 2021 as the pandemic unfolded and the company decided to move beyond petroleum. It paid a hefty fine for this move, as it had an exploration well commitment on the block.
Ratio Petroleum is an Israeli company that was established in 2011 by geologist Eitan Aizenberg following the discovery of the Leviathan gas field. Aizenberg is the acclaimed prospect generator for Leviathan. He is currently the SVP Exploration and Production at Ratio, which already has acreage in the Guyana Basin, the Moroccan Atlantic Basin and the Philippines.
