Guinea seeking firm to conduct onshore oil survey to attract investors

(Bloomberg) – Guinea is seeking to hire a company to conduct a survey to gauge the nation’s onshore oil reserves.

The West African nation’s junta has sought bids from companies to identify potential areas and produce basic data that’d help attract investors, according to a tender published by state oil company Societe Nationale des Petrole, also known by its French acronym SONAP, on Guineenews website.

The project will involve doing a so-called digital full-tensor gravity survey, which helps operators measure and map changes in the density of the subsurface. The work will be done in Guinea’s Kindia, Boke, Labe and Kankan regions, according to the tender. The airborne study will cover about 119,200 square kilometers (74,068 square miles).

Guinea is among the world’s top producers of bauxite, a raw material used to produce aluminum. The country also has the world’s largest untapped deposit of iron ore, which companies including Rio Tinto Plc are looking to exploit.