BP has found high quality natural gas reservoirs in all three wells it has recently drilled offshore Senegal and Mauritania in West Africa, the UK oil and gas supermajor said on Monday.
In recent months, BP and its partner Kosmos Energy have drilled three appraisal wells offshore Mauritania and Senegal and found gas in all nine zones.
At the end of October, Kosmos Energy announced a major gas discovery in the Orca-1 appraisal well offshore Mauritania in the BirAllah area, continuing the 100-percent success rate from nine wells targeting the inboard gas trend in Mauritania and Senegal.
According to independent energy research firm Rystad Energy, Orca-1 was the deepest and largest discovery this year.
Orca-1 holds around 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of recoverable resources, according to Palzor Shenga, a senior analyst on Rystad Energy's upstream team.
"This type of significant discovery, along with the projects lined up, could help establish the African nation as a major player and exporter in the industry," Shenga said.
The Orca-1 well was further deepened to reach an additional target and that target also encountered gas, BP said today.
"This is an exciting result as it proves that our seismic data is identifying hydrocarbon reservoirs deeper than we had previously thought," BP's head of exploration Howard Leach said in a statement.
"We have identified a large prospective area with considerable resource potential in Southern Mauritania. We will now conduct further appraisal drilling to help inform future development decisions," Leach added.
In December last year, BP and partners announced the final investment decision for the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim liquefied natural gas (LNG) project offshore Senegal and Mauritania. The ultra-deep development has the potential to unlock an amount of gas equal to around twice Africa's entire 2017 gas production, BP said, noting that the project's location is ideally placed for exports to markets in Europe, South America, and Asia.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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