THE Gambia will begin oil and gas exploration in 2018. The government issued a permit to FAR, an Australian Securities Exchange listed oil and gas Company to drill Erin Energy’s offshore A2 and A5 blocks located offshore Gambia. Going with the terms of the farm-out agreement approved by the government, FAR will fund Erin Energy through the first exploration well by making an upfront payment of $5.18 million and will carry $8 million of Erin Energy’s share of costs in a planned exploration well to be drilled late 2018.
Erin Energy will retain 20 percent of its working interest while FAR will own 80 percent interest and operatorship. Blocks A2 and A5 are adjacent with FAR’s 2014 SNE-1 oil field and lies approximately 30km offshore in water depths of 50 to 1,200 metres (164 to 3,900 feet), cover an area of approximately 2,683 km2 (663,000 acres) within the emerging and prolific Mauritania-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau Basin.
Both Blocks A2 and A5 could potentially contain resources in excess of one billion barrels of oil. Erin Energy and FAR acquired a 1,504 km2 of modern 3-D seismic data and plan to undertake reprocessing and interpretation the data to further mature identified prospects on Blocks A2 and A5. Erin Energy has identified prospects on the blocks similar to the ‘shelf edge’ play targeted by FAR in its offshore Senegal blocks.