Woodside boosted by success in Mauritania By Toby Shelley Published: September 23 2002 16:06 | Last Updated: September 23 2002 16:06
Woodside Petroleum of Australia on Monday reported a third successful oil well offshore Mauritania. The new find on the Banda prospect follows success at the nearby Chinguetti 4-2 well earlier this month, which was drilled in a move to assess the commerciality of the Chinguetti 1 find of last year.
For Woodside, success in Mauritania would help it in the quest to dilute its dependence on Aus tralian assets.
North-west Africa is attracting increasing interest among oil explorers. Two weeks ago, South Africa's Energy Africa increased its interests offshore Mauritania through a deal with Dana Petroleum of the UK, and Australia's Fusion Oil & Gas. The group announced a placing to raise £2m ($3m) to help fund further work in Mauritania.
To the north, Morocco stirred controversy at the UN last year when it granted reconnaisance licences to TotalFinaElf and Kerr-McGee in the disputed waters of the Western Sahara.
Alan Stein, managing director of Fusion, which has small stakes in the Chinguetti and Banda prospects, said current estimates were that Chinguetti has recoverable reserves of 110m to 150m barrels of oil while Banda could hold about 100m barrels. The commercial breakeven point for Chinguetti was 70m to 90m while a satellite development like Banda only needed 40m barrels.
Mr Stein said development studies are underway and production could start by 2005.
Tony Alves, oil analyst at Investec in London, said there are a number of other oil prospects close to Banda. It raises the possibility that Mauritania could be developed in a similar way to Equatorial Guinea with a complex of interlinked developments, with total recoverable reserves of 500m to 1bn barrels.
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