Continental Focus, International Reach

Accra Block Partners Need More Time

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Azonto Petroleum reported that the JV for the Accra Block offshore Ghana has applied to the Ministry of Energy for a further extension to its initial exploration period. The company said that in March 2014 its subsidiary, Azonto Petroleum Ghana (57% Azonto Petroleum/43% Vitol E&P) were granted a six month extension to the initial exploration period extending it to September 23, 2014.  While all of the commitments for the extended exploration period had already been satisfied, the extension enabled Azonto Ghana and its JV partner Afex Oil (Ghana) to work closely alongside GNPC to carry out further geophysical studies in order to fully incorporate the results from the Starfish-1 well, and further enhance the definition of the additional identified prospectivity on the 2,000 sq km Block.

The Starfish-1 well, drilled in June 2013 by Ophir Energy on the Offshore Accra Contract Area, appeared to have penetrated an Albian-aged stratigraphic reservoir and discovered possible evidence of residual oil in those sands. Remapping focused on prospects in both the shallow water syn-rift Albian play and also in the deeper water Cenomanian/Turonian turbiditic and hinge-line plays.

Subsequently, a data room was opened by the company and a limited number of high quality parties were invited to review the block data with a view to having them join the existing consortium. Whilst some of those parties approached have elected not to proceed, a number remain interested in reviewing the data further. However, the period of the previous extension has proved insufficient to enable the process to be concluded satisfactorily to date.  Consequently, Azonto has applied to the Minister of Energy in Ghana for a further extension and discussions are currently ongoing. The company will update the market once these discussions have been completed.

Commenting Azonto’s Managing Director, Rob Shepherd said: “The work our geoscience team has carried out since assuming effective operatorship of the Block in March 2014 has been of extremely high quality and has been recognized as such by the third parties that have reviewed it to-date.  The reality is that the time period allocated to complete a farm-out process was insufficiently short and so we have asked the government for a further extension. Assuming it is forthcoming, we remain confident that we can obtain a risk and reward exposure to this exciting high impact asset that reflects the size and strategy of the company.”


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