Page 7 - AfrOil Week 21 2022

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Foday B.L. Mansaray, PDSL’s director general, opens the licensing round in London (Photo: Hawilti)

Prospective bidders will be able to view exist- launched in May 2019.
ing geological and geophysical data from the Sierra Leone is not yet known to be a major
offshore zone, including 15,800 line-km of 2D site for oil and gas exploration. However, its off-
seismic data and 10,000 square km of 3D seis- shore zone is already known to contain at least
mic data, plus data from eight previously drilled some hydrocarbon deposits. Anadarko (US,
wells in these data rooms. subsequently acquired by Occidental Petro-
The information in the rooms is being leum) made non-commercial discoveries at
provided and presented by the Petroleum the Venus, Mercury and Jupiter fields drilled
Directorate and its partners – the Johannes- in 2009, 2010 and 2012, while Lukoil (Russia)
burg-headquartered African Energy Chamber made another non-commercial find at Savan-
(AEC), UK-based GeoPartners, Norway’s TGS nah in 2013.
and UK-based IN-VR. Likewise, Tullow (UK/Ireland) and Repsol
This is the country’s first licensing round (Spain) made a non-commercial find at the Jupi-
in three years. The last bidding contest was ter field in 2012. ™

Invictus Energy in ASX share

trading freeze to raise $12mn

ZIMBABWE INVICTUS Energy, which is listed on the Aus- independently estimated to contain 8.2 trillion
tralian Securities Exchange (ASX) placed its cubic feet and 247mn barrels of conventional gas
shares in a trading halt last week as it raised condensate (gross mean unrisked basis).
$12mn to fund a hydrocarbon drilling cam- Drilling of the Mukuyu-1 exploration well is
paign in northeastern Zimbabwe. They were planned to start in July 2022, the first of a two-
due to remain in a halt until Monday, May 23, or well high-impact basin opening campaign.
when an announcement on the capital raising On May 12, the company announced that
was made. seismic inversion results showed potential for
With a head office in Perth, Australia and multiple stacked hydrocarbon-bearing zones in
a local office in Harare, Zimbabwe, Invictus a new Post Dande target (Horizon 200).
is opening one of the last untested large fron- “Further quantitative analysis (QA) studies
tier rift basins in onshore Africa – the Cabora continue to provide support for the presence of
Bassa basin in northern Zimbabwe – through a potential hydrocarbons in the Mukuyu struc-
high-impact exploration programme. ture,” it said in a statement. “The results from
Its key asset is SG 4571 located in the basin a seismic inversion/QA study indicate that the
in Zimbabwe, which contains the world- section immediately below the Horizon 200 tar-
class Mukuyu (formerly known as Muzara- get is likely to comprise multiple stacked hydro-
bani) prospect. Invictus says the target is the carbon-bearing zones, ranging in thickness
largest undrilled prospect onshore Africa from 40 to 80 metres.”

Week 21 25•May•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7