15 November 2015, Dhaka – Senegal is not a significant producer of oil and gas, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA.
The country’s total oil supply production has been too small to register for the last few years and the latest available gas output statistics from the EIA show that Senegal has only produced between 1 and 2 billion cubic feet of gross natural gas per year since 1993.
With such a low output track-record, the country’s hopes of ever progressing its production levels appeared slim at best. That all changed though when Cairn Energy plc announced its exploration success in the fourth quarter of 2014.
At the end of last year, Cairn – along with its joint venture partners ConocoPhillips, FAR Ltd. and Petrosen – made two separate oil discoveries at the FAN-1 exploration well in the Sangomar Deep block and the SNE-1 well in the Sangomar Offshore block, the latter of which was ranked by IHS CERA as the largest oil discovery worldwide in 2014.
In its half yearly operational report released in August, Cairn’s chief executive, Simon Thomson, estimated that these two discoveries, along with currently identified prospects and leads, have a gross mean risked resource base of “more than one billion barrels”. Unsurprisingly, this “exciting opportunity”, is being further explored in the near future, with a variety of planned activities scheduled for the next few months.
*Andreas Exarheas|- Rigzone