Page 8 - AfrOil Week 41 2019

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil
 Another member of the delegation, Sonangol’s CEO Sebastião Pai Quierdo Martins, said that further reforms were in the pipeline.
Specifically, he said, the NOC will carry out a restructuring programme, unload some of its onshore and offshore fields, divest non-core assets, begin work on several gas projects, start using two newly acquired drillships capable of operating in ultra-deep waters and cover gaps in the country’s oil refining and storage capacity.
New gas plans
In related news, Angola’s Mineral Resources and Petroleum Ministry has said it is changing its approach to associated gas.
Oil producers working in the country have typically flared off most of the gas they extract from oil wells. Currently, they burn off nearly 85mn cubic metres per day (equivalent to
31bn cubic metres per year) of gas. These vol- umes ought to be put to use and turned into a resource of revenue, the ministry said in a bro- chure distributed at an industry conference in Cape Town last week.
“Over the years, Angola has somewhat neglected to capitalise on the natural resources that it has to offer,” Petroleum Minister Dia- mantino Azevedo was quoted as saying in the brochure. Angola has not only lost money but has also sustained environmental damage because of flaring, he added.
The brochure did not reveal many details about Luanda’s plan for reducing gas flaring and increasing utilisation rates. But it did say that the government was looking into several differ- ent options. “We are in the process of leveraging other industrial projects for gas monetisation, such as fertiliser factories,” Azevedo said.™
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
Tanzania launches three-well exploration drilling campaign
TANZANIA
TANZANIA Petroleum Development Corp. (TPDC) said last week that it had begun work on a three-well exploration drilling programme in the Eyasi Wembere Basin.
Venosa Ngowe, TPDC’s oil and gas explora- tion manager, said at a press briefing in Dar es Salaam that the company had spudded the first well at a site near the village of Kining’inila in Igunga, a district within Tambora Region. She did not say when TPDC expected to complete the well, but another company representative – Sindi Mduhu, the project manager – did note that the well had already been sunk to a depth of 116 metres within the first 24 hours of work.
All three wells in the programme will be drilled to a depth of 300 metres, she added. TPDC will drill the second and third wells in the Meatu district within Simiyu Region and in the Iramba district within Singida Region, she stated, without elaborating.
Ngowe went on to say that Tanzania’s national oil company (NOC) had decided to focus on Eyasi Wembere after reviewing data collected from the basin in 2015. These data showed that the area held sedimentary rocks that might contain commercially viable hydro- carbon reserves, she said.
Mduhu concurred, stating that the company had used the data to select sites for exploration drilling. The village of Kining’inila “was one of the areas identified as most suitable for drilling oil wells,” he said.
He further stated that the Eyasi Wembere Basin covered a large area spanning the Arusha, Manyara, Simiyu, Singida and Tabora regions.
Speaking at the same press briefing, James Mataragiao, the director-general of TPDC, said that the drilling programme carried a price tag of TZS2.4bn ($1.046mn). The company’s main contractor for the work is Tanzania’s State Min- ing Corp. (STAMICO), he stated.
Mataragiao went on to say that TPDC hoped to discover crude oil as well as natural gas dur- ing the drilling programme and was particularly optimistic about the potential of rift valley areas. “This exploration is being done with expecta- tions of discovering oil in a period that will not exceed five years,” he commented. ™
Eyasi-Wimbere is an onshore basin (Image: TPDC)
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 41 16•October•2019