Page 4 - AfrOil Week 38 2019

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil
Senegal looking more attractive
after latest offshore discovery
BP and its partners say that the Yakaar-Teranga deepwater field contains more than 480 bcm of gas
(Image: Kosmos Energy)
WHAT:
Like Greater Tortue- Ahmeyim, Yakaar-Teranga appears to hold enough gas to justify the construction of an LNG plant.
WHY:
The discovery has come to light just in time to draw investors to Sene- gal’s upcoming offshore bidding round.
WHAT NEXT:
In the long term, Senegal hopes to use gas from the offshore zone to establish itself as an exporter and to promote economic development at home.
BP (UK) and its partners Kosmos Energy (US) and Petrosen (Senegal, state-owned) have reported another natural gas discovery at the Yakaar-Terenga deepwater field, located off- shore Senegal.
On September 23, Kosmos said it had encountered approximately 30 metres of net gas pay in the Cenomanian strata of the Yakaar-2 appraisal well. The find was large enough to bring the reserve estimate for the field up from about 400bn cubic metres to more than 480 bcm, according to a statement from the office of Senegal’s President Macky Sall.
Strong potential
The discovery served to confirm that the field’s reservoir extends southward of the Yakaar-1 well and also maintained the winning streak of companies exploring the inboard Mau- ritania/Senegal trend, Kosmos said. So far, the company noted, wells targeting this trend have had a success rate of 100%.
President Sall went further, saying that Yakaar-Teranga appeared to be part of the big- gest deposit of gas in West Africa.
The field lies within a “wide structure on both
sides of the border between Senegal and Mauri- tania,” he said.
Yakaar-2 is not BP’s first discovery offshore Senegal; Yakaar-1 was the largest gas find in the world in 2017. BP has also found about 425 bcm of gas at Greater Tortue-Ahmeyim, a field that straddles the Senegalese-Mauritanian border.
And there may be even more: BP, Kosmos and Petrosen hold licences for two blocks within the inboard Mauritania/Senegal trend – Cayar Profond and St. Louis Profond, which cover an area of around 33,000 square km in the offshore zone. Both Yakaar-Teranga and Greater Tor- tue-Ahmeyim lie within this area, which may hold as much as 1.4-2.8tn cubic metres of gas, according to BP’s estimates.
Long-term benefits
These discoveries have the potential to spur sig- nificant economic growth in Senegal over the long term.
Some of this growth will stem from invest-
ment in upstream operations – namely, funds
for the development of the gas fields. But BP and
its partners also plan to spend billions of dollars
on the downstream end. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 38 25•September•2019