The African Energy Chamber has called on investors to utilise every opportunity to benefit from the extension of the 12th Gabon’s Licensing Round.
Financial Street gathered that Gabon’s Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and PGS just expanded the Gabon MegaSurvey coverage, significantly increasing access to 3D seismic over the 35 blocks on offer under the ongoing 12th Offshore Licensing Round.
In a very competitive market environment, Gabon is showing once again its willingness to remain attractive and engage regional and global investors to attract capital and technology in its acreages.
Gabon’s ongoing Licensing Round was launched in November 2018 and has already been met with significant success, resulting in the signing of a record number of PSCs in sub-Saharan Africa last year.
In response to ongoing market conditions and COVID-19, the Ministry of Petroleum, Gas, Hydrocarbons and Mines extended the submission deadline beyond April 30, 2020.
The extended round gives investors the opportunity to keep studying one of Africa’s hottest upstream frontier. The Chamber salutes the offering of additional seismic and well data as a key solution to maintain and expand Gabon’s engagement with potential and credible investors.
As an additional incentive for investors, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and PGS are now offering over 65 000km2 of 3D seismic and over 21.000km of 2D seismic data across the 35 blocks, providing further opportunity to integrate new data into evaluations of open blocks. Investors can do so through the Gabon MegaSurvey, a cost-effective tool for regional evaluation and visualisation of plays and migration pathways.
In addition to the seismic data, well data is now available for 167 wells within the MegaSurvey area, to support the evaluation of the blocks on offer.
“Value-added composite logs used in conjunction with the regional seismic dataset will help the assessment of prospectively and play evaluation,” PGS declared.
President for the CEMAC region at the African Energy Chamber, LeoncioNze, added, “The Chamber notes the country’s continued commitment to offer an enabling business environment for investors, which echoes several recommendations issued earlier this year as part of our Africa’s Energy Commonsense agenda.
“We see the ongoing Licensing Round in Gabon as a pillar of future investments in the whole region and a booster to the sector’s recovery,” he added.
