Page 4 - AfrOil Week 49 2019

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil
Mohamed Silimane, Savannah’s Niger Stakeholder Relations Manager (2nd from right), greeting Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou (2nd from left). (Photo: Savannah
A closer look at Niger
with Savannah Petroleum
The UK-based company speaks to NewsBase about Niger’s potential and prospects
WHAT:
Savannah is working to expand Niger’s oil production capacity in the Agadem Rift Basin.
WHY:
The country is in a better position to realise its potential, now that CNPC is building a new export pipeline.
WHAT NEXT:
Niger has the potential to attract additional outside investment.
NIGER is not yet a major oil producer, and it does not often get much attention from indus- try observers, despite its potential. But Savan- nah Petroleum, which holds licences over four blocks in the Agadem Basin, believes the coun- try deserves more attention.
NewsBase recently spoke with Jessica Ross, Savannah’s vice-president for corporate affairs, and Yacine Wafy, Niger country manager, about the UK-based company’s operations and about the prospects for building up the hydrocarbon sector in the region.
Setting the scene
Niger is a landlocked country in West Africa that shares borders with Algeria, Libya, Chad, Nige- ria, Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali. Its known oil reserves lie within the Agadem Rift Basin, which is more than half the size of the UK section of the Central North Sea. The basin is believed to
contain at least several billion barrels of crude oil in recoverable reserves.
To date, the most active investor in Niger’s oil sector has been China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). The state-controlled Chinese firm entered the country in 2008. It has collected more than 30,000km of 2D seismic data and 13,000 square km of 3D seismic data from the area covered by its Agadem production-sharing contract (PSC). It has built a refinery outside the basin in Zinder with a design capacity of 22,000 barrels per day (bpd), a pipeline to connect its fields to the Zinder plant and other logistics and infrastructure facilities. It brought the Sokor and Goumeri oilfields on stream in 2011 and then began production from the Agadi field in 2014.
According to data from the US Energy Infor- mation Administration (EIA), CNPC was able
to sustain output at the projected peak level of 20,000 bpd between 2012 and 2014 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 48 11•December•2019