Page 16 - AfrOil Week 08 2023

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

South Africa renews gas explorer

Kinetiko’s exploration rights

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa’s government has renewed “The renewals covering an area of approxi-
exploration rights for Kinetiko Energy, an Aus- mately 3,135 square km represent a substantial
tralian natural gas exploration and development portion of the company’s current exploration
company, for two blocks in the north-eastern rights and support the majority of the planned
part of the country. exploration activities of 2023,” Kinetiko said.
In a statement dated February 20, the ASX- “The company intends to apply for production
listed junior said the Petroleum Agency of South rights in the near future over these exploration
Africa (PASA) had granted its subsidiary, Afro rights with would be valid for an initial period
Energy, renewals on Exploration Rights 270 and of 30 years.”
272 for two years. The announcement of the renewal of the
The renewals, it noted, supported the rights came four days after Kinetiko said that it
approved work programmes that Kinetiko has had, together with Gruner Energy, a South Afri-
in place to accelerate exploration focused on can owner and operator of energy assets, exe-
advanced shallow conventional gas and coal bed cuted a letter of intent (LOI) to conclude a gas
methane in Africa’s most-developed economy. development and supply agreement. ™

TotalEnergies says Brulpadda, Luiperd

fields hold more than 125 bcm of gas

SOUTH AFRICA TOTALENERGIES (France) has said that Block French major will probably need to contract
11B/12B offshore South Africa might contain as a semi-submersible rig capable of drilling six
much as 4.5 trillion cubic feet (127.4bn cubic development wells in 1,000- to 1,500-metre-
metres) of natural gas in recoverable resources. deep water. It will also have to build an 18-inch,
In documents submitted to South African 109-km subsea pipeline capable of pumping gas
authorities within the framework of the envi- from the offshore Luiperd field to an existing
ronmental approval process, the French major facility – namely, the FA platform, a production
reported that more than half of these resources facility built by state-run PetroSA that has been
were within the Luiperd field. That site holds idle for some time.
about 3 trillion cubic feet (85 bcm) of gas, while From the platform, gas could be pumped to
the Brulpadda field holds the remaining 1.5 tril- shore for delivery to domestic customers, such
lion cubic metres (42.4 bcm), the documents as gas-fired thermal power plants (TPPs) or the
noted. Mossel Bay gas-to-liquids (GTL) synthetic fuel
The two fields also contain substantial plant.
volumes of gas condensate, they added, with TotalEnergies has said it could begin produc-
Luiperd holding around 97mn barrels and Brul- tion in 2027, assuming that it secures all the nec-
padda about 77mn barrels. essary permits and authorisations. If so, it will
TotalEnergies has informed the South Afri- be able to send 210mn cubic feet (5.95mn cubic
can government that it intends to develop Brul- metres) per day of gas to the Mossel Bay GTL
padda and Luiperd in multiple stages. In the first plant or 140 mcf (3.96 mcm) per day to a power
stage, it will focus solely on Luipe trillion cubic station during the first stage of development.
feet rd and seek to extract around 1-2 tcf (28.3- Then in the second stage, it would be about
56.6 bcm) of gas from that field. Then in the sec- to bring another 200 mcf (5.7 mcm) per day to
ond stage, it will seek to extract another 1 trillion clients in the Mossel Bay region. There might
cubic feet (28.3 bcm) from Luiperd and up to 1.5 even be a third stage of development in which
trillion cubic feet (42.4 bcm) from Brulpadda. the company extracted 500 mcf (14.2 mcm) per
During both phases, the company will send gas day and pumped it to customers in the Port Eliz-
condensate to shore. abeth area via a separate pipeline, which would
For first-stage production operations, the follow a 160-km route. ™

P16 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 08 23•February•2023