Gabon expands 3D seismic access for offshore licensing round

JOHANNESBURG - Gabon’s Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and PGS have 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 with 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 the pandemic of Covid-19, the Ministry of Petroleum, Gas, Hydrocarbons and Mines extended the submission deadline beyond April 30th, 2020. The extended round gives investors an opportunity to keep studying what is 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 65 000 sq. km of 3D seismic and over 21 000 km 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 visualization of plays and migration pathways.

In addition to the seismic data, well data is now available for 167 wells within the MegaSurvey area, in order 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 prospectivity and play evaluation,” PGS declared this week.

“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,” declared Leoncio Amada Nze, President for the CEMAC region at the African Energy Chamber. “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.

Investors willing to consult the MegaSurvey products may do so by contacting amme.info@pgs.com to find out more about tailored seismic and well data packages or to arrange a data viewing. In addition, all information related to the licensing round is available at https://bit.ly/3dYbFu0.

Gabon recently passed a new Hydrocarbons Code, Law No. 002/2019 of July 16th, 2019 offering a more competitive upstream fiscal regime and providing an even better enabling environment for investors. The country is already home to very successful upstream ventures from various international oil companies and independents such as Total, Perenco, VAALCO Energy, BW Energy and Maurel & Prom to name a few. Until the start of the covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent production cuts, the country had also successfully managed to reverse a historic decline in domestic oil production and had made new significant offshore discoveries.