Africa

The deep-water architecture of northern Sierra Leone: A tale of two oceans

Figure 1: The new Northern Sierra Leone survey in the context of the western section of the WATM highlighting it’s location in the transition between transform and extensional rift segments. New licensing activity from the last 12 months is also…

Gravitating towards discoveries in Angola’s onshore Kwanza Basin

Unlocking pre-salt potential through integrated airborne geophysics Angola location map. Oil production in Angola began in the onshore Kwanza Basin, where early discoveries such as Benfica, Tobias and Quenguela North were made on seismic datasets acquired during the 1960s to…

Listen to the drill bit

“Our runs are getting shorter and shorter…” That’s what Harrie and Nick from Aurora Drilling Optimisation Services were told by the Shell team that was drilling a deep onshore exploration well in Libya about 15 years ago. They helped design…

Always on the lookout for new frontiers

“My mother was very patient with me,” says Cany Jobe. “When I needed to make a big decision about which direction to take in high school, I gave her a hard time. I didn’t want to choose between arts, science…

The Keta Basin: Ghana’s deepwater frontier edges back into focus

The Keta Basin – a basin with familiar geological DNA The East Keta acreage lies in the central portion of the Accra-Keta-Benin basin, formed during the Middle Cretaceous opening of the South Atlantic. Geologically, the basin shares some similarities with…

Momentum behind the frontier Angoche and Save basins

Milton Zibane Natural gas in Mozambique is currently produced from four fields. Three of them, Pande, Temane and Inhassoro, are located onshore in the Mozambique basin, 520 km north of Maputo. The fourth, and most prolific field, Coral, is located…

Poised for passion: The race for riches in Equatorial Guinea’s deepwater

Smart licensing in Equatorial Guinea New awards necessitate the availability of a new regionally consistent depth-imaged seismic framework Figure 1: New license awards: ENI (purple), Galp (green), Chevron (orange) and ConocoPhilips (red). In 2025, Searcher reprocessed approximately 10,500 km of…

Matching global explorers with Morocco’s frontier potential

Salim Lahsini Morocco’s Atlantic margin offers a combination of proven petroleum systems and large areas that remain underexplored. The country wants to translate this diversity into clear, investable exploration opportunities. This requires more than technical datasets and conference presentations; it…

Ghana’s next frontier: The Voltaian Basin

Michael Aryeetey Hydrocarbon exploration in Ghana is entering a new stage: After two decades of offshore success, attention is shifting inland, towards the vast and little‑understood Voltaian Basin. Michael Aryeetey, Deputy Chief Executive for Exploration and Production at the Ghana…

The geological context of the North Cleopatra block

A few days ago, it was announced that the Velox-1X well, drilled in the North Cleopatra block offshore deep-water Egypt by Shell and partners, hit oil. The well, which was drilled to 6,000 m below sea level, is located in…