Page 12 - AfrOil Week 01 2021

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

Contracts were awarded to Italy’s Saipem and Given NNPC’s patchy history of operating these
subsidiary Saipem Contracting worth a total state facilities, state investment in rehabilitating
of $1.485bn – $898mn for Warri and $587mn the refineries has been a thorny issue and Min-
for Kaduna – in August that entail a three-phase ister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre
approach to rehabilitate the refineries over 77 Sylva sought to quell the discontent about ongo-
months. ing spending, saying that NNPC had to continue
NNPC budgeted NGN100bn ($245mn) for paying salaries despite not producing any fuel
full-year 2021 and utilised the full allocation. from the facilities. ™

FAR still upbeat about Gambia offshore

despite disappointment at Bambo-1ST1

THE GAMBIA AUSTRALIA’S FAR Ltd remains optimistic further hydrocarbon prospects in the A2 and
about the possibility of discovering crude oil at A5 blocks in The Gambia. Bambo-1 and the
a site adjacent to Sangomar, a field discovered sidetrack have confirmed that all of the requisite
offshore Senegal, in the zone controlled by The petroleum system elements are present in the
Gambia, despite its recent failure to find com- area, and the technical team is already busy inte-
mercial reserves there. grating the new data and high-grading future
FAR revealed in a statement late last month prospects.”
that it had decided to plug and abandon Bam- FAR was until recently a minority share-
bo-1ST1, the sidetrack well it had begun drill- holder in the neighbouring Sangomar block.
ing at Block A2 earlier in December very near It finalised the sale of its stake in RSSD, the
the maritime border with Senegal, close to the joint venture set up to explore and develop that
southern edge of the Sangomar block. It said it licence area, to the operator Woodside Energy
had determined that the well did not hold com- last year. That stake had consisted of a 13.67%
mercially viable reserves of crude after sinking stake in the Sangomar Offshore field and a 15%
it to a depth of 3,317 metres and carrying out stake in the other two sections of RSSD’s licence
wireline logging. area, Rufisque and Sangomar Deep Offshore. ™
In its statement, the Australian company said
that the drilling and logging data collected from
the main well, Bambo-1, and from the sidetrack
well indicated the presence of oil shows in sev-
eral of the target intervals at the Bambo field.
However, many of the shows in the main well
had occurred in reservoirs of rather poor qual-
ity and in traps that may have been breached, it
reported.
It went on to say that results from the side-
track well had been more interesting, as Bam-
bo-1ST1 had encountered a number of shows
in the Soloo Deep interval that had not been
intersected by the original Bambo-1 well or by
any other exploration wells drilled in the vicin-
ity. These crude shows persisted over intervals
of several hundred metres, which is an indica-
tion that the Bambo field has access to a “prolific
oil-generative kitchen” site, it commented. If so,
there may be opportunities to explore other sites
within Block A2 and the adjacent Block A5 site,
it added.
Cath Norman, FAR’s managing director,
struck an upbeat note. “Although no moveable
oil was interpreted, FAR is encouraged to have
encountered good oil shows and potential res-
ervoirs in the Bambo-1 well and Bambo-1ST1
sidetrack,” she stated. “The project has provided
significant geological information, including
new play types, that reaffirms the potential of Bambo-1 and Bambo-1ST1 were drilled very close to Sangomar (Image: FAR)

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