Page 18 - MEOG Week 01 2021

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to proceed to the final stage of the contest, he said. pre-drill planning.
Osu did not name any of the shortlisted bidders The well, which lies in the WA-359-P explora-
or say when the department hoped to wrap up tion permit, was drilled to a total depth of 5,618
the licensing round. He stressed, though, that the metres measured depth (MD) to intersect the
bidding process was “still ongoing in line with our Mungaroo Formation. The formation had been
published timelines on [the] DPR website and bid estimated to contain a prospective recoverable
portal.” resource of 15 trillion cubic feet (424.8bn cubic
In Angola, the National Oil, Gas and Biofuels metres).
Agency (ANPG) has set a date for the launch of a “Ironbark was a world-scale prospect in a
licensing round covering nine blocks in the Lower highly prospective address, and it needed drill-
Congo Basin and the Kwanza Basin. The contest ing. We got an answer, but it was not the one we
had originally been due to take place in May 2020, wanted,” said NZOG CEO Andrew Jefferies.
but the agency has now committed to a start date He added that it would take some time before
of April 30, 2021. It will accept offers until June 9, the dry hole’s implications for the play were
2021, and all participating firms must be prepared understood.
to meet “[as] a mandatory condition of participa- WA-359-P had been expected to serve as a
tion the payment of an entry fee in the amount of backfill for the existing North West Shelf (NWS)
$1mn, which will allow access to the data pack- liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project, given
ages related to the basins to bid,” ANPG said in a that the permit is located just 50 km from exist-
statement. ing infrastructure. This plan now appears to be
In other news, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Mines and off the table, but Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and Beach
Petroleum has announced plans to exit the con- recently greenlit the onshore Waitsia gas project
tract it signed with US-based GreenComm Tech- to serve as a new source of feedstock for the giant
nologies last April for the construction of a new export project.
gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in the Somali region. Beach said on December 23 that Waitsia, its
A ministry official confirmed earlier this week 50:50 joint venture with Mitsui, had reached a
that the $3.6bn deal was being cancelled because final investment decision (FID) on initial fund-
GreenComm had grossly misrepresented its tech- ing for its 250 TJ (6.5mn cubic metres) per day
nical and financial capabilities. second-phase of development. The independent
said full funding would be committed once cer-
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping tain regulatory approvals and commercial con-
Africa’s oil and gas sector then please click here for ditions were resolved, with these anticipated to
NewsBase’s AfrOil Monitor. be wrapped up in the first quarter.
Waitsia is considered to be one of the coun-
AsianOil: BP’s dry hole offshore WA try’s largest onshore discoveries in the last four
UK super-major BP’s Ironbark-1 exploration decades. Beach’s managing director Matt Kay
well offshore Western Australia has turned out described it as “a world-class, low-cost, onshore
to be a dry hole, the developer’s junior partners gas resource,” saying that his company was
announced last week. “thrilled to be growing [its] portfolio in Western
Cue Energy Resources, Beach Energy and Australia.”
New Zealand Oil and Gas (NZOG) revealed
on December 29 that “no significant hydrocar- If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
bon shows” had been encountered. As such, BP Asia’s oil and gas sector then please click here for
intends to plug and abandon the well in line with NewsBase’s AsianOil Monitor.

P18 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 01 06•January•2021