Page 8 - GLNG Week 43

GLNG AFRICA GLNG
BP, Kosmos find large
gas reserves offshore
Mauritania
PERFORMANCE
BP (UK) and its partner Kosmos Energy (US) have announced a significant natural gas find within the Orca section of a large offshore block that straddles the border between Senegal and Mauritania.
The two companies revealed on October 28 that they had discovered the gas by drilling the Orca-1 well at the block. Data from the well indi- cate that Orca holds 13tn cubic feet (368bn cubic metres) of gas initially in place (GIIP), they said.
Together, they added, the Orca and Marsouin sites may hold as much as 50 tcf (1.42tn cubic metres) of gas in the areas near BirAllah. This is more than enough to provide support for an LNG production and export project, they said. BP has said it wants to build a new LNG hub with a production capacity of 10mn tonnes per year (tpy) not far from BirAllah.
Details
The UK-based company and Kosmos have teamed up with the national oil company (NOC) Société Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures et de Patrimoine Minier (SMHPM) to explore and develop Orca. BP has a 62% stake in the project and also serves as its operator. The remaining equity is split between Kosmos, with 28%, and SMHPM, with 10%.
In drilling the Orca-1 well, the partners were targeting a heretofore untested Albian play within the MSGBC (Mauritania-Senegal-Gam- bia-Bissau-Conakry) Basin. They encountered 36 metres of net gas pay in the Albian strata, more than anticipated prior to the spudding of the well. Additionally, they sunk the well to a depth that allowed them to find another 11 metres of net gas pay in the Cenomanian layers. This served to extend the Cenomanian play first encountered in the Marsouin-1 well, they said.
BP,KosmosandtheNOChavealsoidentified a deeper play at Orca, in the Aptian strata. This play remains untested, though.
BP has said it wants to build a new LNG hub with a production capacity of 10mn tonnes per year
in a company press release.
Palzor Shenga, a senior analyst for the
upstream sections of the Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy, agreed. Calling Orca-1 “[the] deepest and largest discovery so far this year,” he said that the find had brought Mauritania up to second place on the list of countries with the highest discovered reserves this year, tying with Guyana. “This type of significant discov- ery, along with the projects lined up, could help establish the African nation as a major player and exporter in the industry,” he said.
Meanwhile, Liam Kelleher, a member of Wood Mackenzie’s LNG and gas section, said the find was good news for both Mauritania and Senegal. “We think the discoveries in Mauritania and Senegal will see the region become a major LNG hub in the long term, with a combined out- putofgreaterthan30milliontonnesperannum by the mid-2030s, pushing the region into the top 10 producers worldwide. Orca-1 simply adds tothispotential,”hesaid.
Kelleher added: “The region will have to compete for buyers in the competitive global LNG market, in which the US is set to become the biggest supplier in the world by 2024. Yet its lower-cost conventional resource can make it more competitive. The delivered cost of LNG into Europe from Mauritania and Senegal has a breakeven of less than $6.2 per million British thermal units [$171.49 per 1,000 cubic metres], while US LNG has a breakeven closer to $7 per mmBtu [$193.62 per 1,000 cubic metres].”™
notfarfrom ThepartnersdrilledOrca-1atasitethatlies
BirAllah.
125km from shore, in water that is 2,510 metres deep. They sunk the well to a depth of 5,266 metres below sea level.
Reactions
Andrew Inglis, the CEO of Kosmos, described the gas find as significant. “Orca-1, which we believe is the largest deepwater hydrocarbon discovery in the world so far this year, further demonstrates the world-scale quality of the Mauritania gas basin,” he was quoted as saying
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 43 31•October•2019