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Indonesian company preparing to drill at Mozambique’s Búzi block
MOZAMBIQUE
BUZI Hydrocarbons, a subsidiary of Indone- sia’s Energi Mega Persada (EMP), is reportedly preparing to drill its first exploration well at the onshore Búzi block in Central Mozambique.
Carlos Zacarias, the president of Mozam- bique’s National Oil Institute (known as INP), told the Notícias daily that Buzi Hydrocarbons was just a few days away from spudding the well. He did not say exactly when drilling would begin, but he did state that the Indonesian company would be working with state-owned Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH) to execute the project.
Zacarias went on to say that Buzi Hydrocar- bons and ENH had already delivered the nec- essary equipment to the drilling site. If the first exploration well shows positive results, he said, the companies may drill a second well.
Equity in the project is divided between Buzi Hydrocarbons, with 75%, and ENH, with 25%. The block covers an area of around 10,000 square km and may contain as much as 223bn cubic feet (6.315bn cubic metres) of gas. It lies about 27km
to the south of Beira and abuts the Save River. Buzi Hydrocarbons and ENH have said they anticipate spending about $50mn on exploration and development work there.
The partners signed an agreement on the Búzi project in 2008 and then gathered 610km of 2D seismic data from the licence area in 2012- 2013. They then drew up plans for launching explo- ration drilling in 2015, but they were unable to move forward because of security issues in the area.
Búzi lies within the Mozambique sedimen- tary basin, which has yet to be explored exten- sively. Gulf Oil did discover some natural gas there in 1962, but it determined that the reserves were not large enough to be commercially viable at that time.
Now, though, Mozambican authorities are more optimistic. Omar Mitha, the CEO of ENH, told Upstream last month on the sidelines of the Africa Oil Week conference that the Búzi block would probably be able to support a gas-to- power project.
Springfield Energy all set in Ghana
GHANA
SPRINGFIELD Exploration and Production (SEP) confirmed last week that it had discovered sizeable hydrocarbon reserves at West Cape Three Points Block 2 (WCTP Block 2), located offshore Ghana.
In a statement, the Ghanaian company said it had found crude oil in its first round of drill- ing. Results from Afina-1x, the first of two wells drilled this year, indicate that WCTP Block 2 holds 1.5bn barrels of oil in place (OIP), as well as 19.8bn cubic metres of natural gas.
This reserve estimate may rise as exploration continues, it added. “The current undiscovered potential of the block is estimated at over 3bn barrels of oil and gas in multiple leads and pros- pects within various proven reservoir units,” it reported. The company said it had drilled the Afina-1x well to a total depth of 4,085 metres in waters that are 1,030 metres deep. It noted that the well had encountered 50 metres of net pay in light crude oil at its primary target, the Cenoma- nian strata, and 10 metres of net pay in gas and light crude at its secondary target, the Turonian layer. SEP has an 84% stake in WCTP Block 2.
The remaining equity in the licence area is split between state-owned Ghana National
Petroleum Co. (GNPC) and its exploration arm, GNPC Exploration and Production Co. (Explorco) The discovery confirms SEP’s posi- tion as the first independent Ghanaian company to drill and find commercial reserves in the off- shore zone.
Kevin Okyere, the company’s CEO, com- mented: “This is great news for Springfield, Ghana and Africa. We are excited about the dis- covery, as it ties into our vision of becoming a leading African upstream player with a global focus. This, for us, means increased opportuni- ties to impact the lives of our people positively with the resources.”
KK Sarpong, the CEO of GNPC, also expressed satisfaction with SEP’s work. “As the national oil company of Ghana, GNPC is proud of this feat, chalked in this all-Ghanaian part- nership,” he said. “This achievement fits into GNPC’s strategic pillars of ‘replacing and grow- ing reserves’ as well as ‘enhancing sustainability through local content development’ ... This discovery demonstrates once again the high prospectivity of Ghana’s sedimentary basins and the Ghanaian capacity to deliver, given the o p p o r t u n i t y .”
Week 50 19•December•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7
