A joint consortium between Italian oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) and Portugal's Galp-Energia expects to start exploring for oil and natural gas in Mocambique offshore Rovuma Basin off Cabo Delgado province's coast within the next three months.
ENI holds 70 percent of the consortium and Galp-Energia the remaining 30 percent of shares. The Mozambican government's consortium contract allows an exploration period of eight years to be followed by 30 years of the production if hydrocarbons are discovered, Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique reported.
Galp-Energia general manager Carlos Ferreira said that the consortium's schedule had postulated that drilling was to begin in May but has subsequently been postponed to September to allow for the arrival of the necessary offshore drilling equipment.
The ENI- Galp-Energia consortium will be drilling in waters more than one and one-half miles deep, a more extensive effort than the wells drilled further north by the Houston-based company Anadarko in their Mozambican government's offshore concessions, whose six offshore wells penetrate less than a mile into the seabed.
The ENI- Galp-Energia consortium is optimistic about its opportunities, as four of Anadarko's offshore wells made significant natural gas discoveries of sufficient size that Anadarko is considering investing in constructing in a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility to transport its output to foreign markets.
By. Joao Peixe, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com
Joao is a writer for Oilprice.com More