Kosmos Finds More Gas Off Senegal
US independent Kosmos Energy on May 9 announced a “significant gas discovery” at its Teranga-1 exploration well offshore northern Senegal on the Cayar Offshore Profond block, upping its estimate for gas in the region following this - its fifth consecutive successful well in the region - and signalling it now plans to target oil in its 2017 drilling campaign nearby.
Some 65 km northwest of Dakar in nearly 1,800 meters of water, the Teranga-1 well was drilled to a total depth of 4,485 meters; it encountered 31 meters (102 feet) of net gas pay, said Kosmos.
Kosmos said that well results confirm that a prolific inboard gas fairway extending some 200km from the Marsouin-1 well offshore southern Mauritania through the Greater Tortue area on the maritime boundary to the Teranga-1 well in Senegal.
The company has now drilled five consecutive successful exploration and appraisal wells in this fairway with a 100% success rate and now says it has discovered a gross P-mean resource of approximately some 25 trillion ft3 (708bn m3) all told, estimating the fairway may hold more than 50 trillion ft3 of resource potential.
Two months ago when Kosmos estimated its P-mean gross resource base at 20 trillion ft3 for the Greater Tortue Complex, its chairman and CEO Andrew Inglis he said the Tortue West structure alone might “underpin a world-class standalone LNG project.” Now its P-mean estimate is 5 trillion ft3 higher.
Kosmos’s Inglis has now said: “Our continuing exploration success demonstrates we have opened a super-major scale basin offshore Mauritania and Senegal with world-class resource potential. Given the scale and quality of the gas resource discovered along the inboard trend, our focus is to move this resource through to development. Our forward exploration plan is to mature the two independent tests with oil potential in northern Mauritania and in the outboard of Mauritania and Senegal for drilling in 2017.”
Kosmos holds a 60% interest in the Teranga-1 well, along with Timis Corp (30%) and state Petrosen (10%). Since 2014, Kosmos has held rights to explore in the St. Louis and Cayar Offshore Profond blocks.
The exploration effort off northwest Africa however meant that Kosmos on May 9 announced a net loss of $59mn in 1Q 2016, despite sales of 1.9mn bbls of oil during the quarter. The company is also a participant in Tullow-operated TEN oil and gas development offshore Ghana, which it said May 9 is about 90% complete and on budget with first oil expected in third quarter 2016. Kosmos also has a 24.08% stake in the Jubilee field, also offshore Ghana and Tullow-operated, which though has been affected by a maintenance outage that has overrun by about a month.
Kosmos capex in 1Q 2016 was $250mn, reflecting a full quarter of spend on our exploration and appraisal drilling program and the TEN project. It expects the rate of spend to ramp down from mid-2016, with full-year capex for this year still expected to remain at $650mn.
Mark Smedley