somalias massive oil deposit

SOMALIA'S MASSIVE OIL DEPOSIT

Now back to Somalia's natural resources. A 1984 report by an American oil exploration company in Mogadishu says that Somalia, with its longest coast in Africa South of the Sahara is sitting on a massive offshore oil deposit. Now, all our own prospective oil explores and engineers require is the use of the latest technology in development of proven oil fields. In addition, they would need several rounds of negotiations with various technology providers across the world. As the 1984 American exploration company located the enormous offshore deposit, the focus should be on offshore technology.

http://www.jebcoseis.com/africa_kenya_article.htm

An interesting revelation of Kenya's crude oil and natural gas potential was contained in a 1993 world geological survey conducted by the United States Department of Interior. The survey, which sought to establish the stock of unidentified crude oil and natural gas in the world, found that Kenya's coastal region has the potential for producing around 100 million barrels of crude oil and between 600 billion and six trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

If this reserve were to be identified, these natural resources could significantly alter Kenya's economic fortunes.

It is interesting to note that the survey identified the basins around the Kenyan, Somali and Tanzanian coast to have the same potential for undiscovered crude oil as the Gulf of Guinea, which has now become the global hotspot for oil exploration in West Africa after the discoveries in Equatorial Guinea. The Gulf of Guinea covers Nigeria, Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the survey, Somali has discovered it has a huge crude oil potential.

On the side of the natural gases, the Lamu Basin and Somali Basin, along the Indian Ocean, have been identified to be among the regions with high potential for discoveries.

The return of international companies to Kenya's oil exploration activities follows aggressive marketing by Nock, coupled with a new vision that emphasises the importance of pushing the search to its logical conclusion.

Since 1992, when Nock decided to go it alone in its exploration activities after donor funding fizzled out and foreign prospectors chickened out, there was only a little finance from the Kenyan Government. The country's sedimentary basins believed to hold crude oil have been subdivided into basins and blocks.

These regions include the Lamu basin which covers Kenya's coastal area and the Indian Ocean, the Mandera and Anza basin covering nearly all of the North East Province and a sizeable portion of Eastern Province, and the Tertiary Rift Basin which covers the Turkana area and some portions of Western Province and lands nearby. These basins have been sub-divided into nine blocks covering 325,060 square kilometres or 56% of Kenya's total geographical mass of 580,367 square kilometres.

The blocks have been extensively analysed for exploration and are now being marketed independently through international road shows.

In the last two months, Nock has signed production sharing agreements with two major oil companies in the Lamu basin. These are Dana Petroleum and Woodside, a consortium from Australia and Afrex and Pan Continent. Dana is one of the leading prospectors who recently struck oil in Mauritania. Two companies are currently competing to get an exploration licence for some of the remaining blocks in the Lamu basin. "We haven't signed anyone yet on-shore," says the Nock managing director, "but we have given away most of the off-shore blocks." Stratic Energy Corporation from Canada, which has helped discover oil is West Africa, is also eyeing one of the blocks as well as a UK company.

"We have come to look at exploration potential in Kenya because there have been developments in Kenya that have raised the potential of this area," says Tom Mackay, manager of new ventures at Stratic.

According to experts, several factors are making the global petroleum industry focus on Kenya. The main reason is the discovery of oil in Sudan and Somali and the potential that Tanzania and Uganda are showing. Then there is the huge wave of interest that has resulted from the discovery of huge reserves of oil along the Gulf of Guinea. And now there is the exploration data that Nock has compiled in the last decade that has added more weight to its marketing push.
JEBCO Seismic (UK) Ltd

Source: Reuters, 20 April, 2004

East Africa Lures Gamblers In Global Quest For Oil

NAIROBI - There was a time when oil executives would be more likely to visit east Africa to lounge on its beaches or marvel at its wildlife than open a new frontier in the quest for crude.

That might be about to change. Exploration firms are taking a fresh look at the Indian Ocean coast stretching from Madagascar to Kenya, hoping to defy conventional industry wisdom that says the region has some gas but little oil.

"East Africa is likely to become one of the world's hottest oil exploration frontiers in the next few years," said Chris Matchette-Downes of JEBCO Seismic, which has reviewed geological data taken from east Africa's coast.

"I've seen a lot of evidence for oil," he said. "I think we're just beginning to see a realisation of that."
Long overlooked by an industry that has traditionally focused on west African producers like Nigeria and Angola further south, the eastern seaboard has drawn renewed interest from both oil majors and smaller firms hoping to strike it lucky.

Driven partly by increasing difficulty in finding fresh fields in time-worn exploration zones like the Gulf of Mexico and North Sea, companies are tapping new technology that makes offshore surveying more efficient.

While west African fields are ideally placed to serve US markets across the Atlantic, explorers hope new finds in the east will meet ready demand from across the Indian Ocean, in Japan, India, Singapore and other parts of Asia.

Royal Dutch/Shell is searching off Tanzania, Australia's Woodside Petroleum off Kenya, and US-based Vanco Energy off Madagascar, while the Malaysian state oil firm Petronas is looking for offshore oil and gas in Mozambique.

Sudan has been pumping growing quantities of oil for several years, and Canada's Heritage Oil Corp. has drilled exploration wells in Lake Albert on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Experts say huge finds might lie off the coast of anarchic Somalia - for anyone who dares to try.

Governments are keen to promote the energy potential of the Indian Ocean coast, sensing a chance to bolster economies reliant mainly on commodities like tea and coffee or tourism.

"For the first time in maybe 10 years we are having a lot of people making enquiries," said Peter Thuo, acting exploration manager at the state-run National Oil Corporation of Kenya, which markets Kenyan exploration rights. "There might be a lot of undiscovered resources."

Elusive elephants

The relatively low cost of exploration rights off east Africa has encouraged some firms to take a gamble - even if the risks of drawing a blank are high.

In Kenya, Woodside is hoping to replicate its strike in deep waters off the west African country of Mauritania in 2001, an area which it says shares similar geology to its exploration zone off Kenya's coast.

"For less than five or six million dollars we've got access to an area offshore east Africa that's about double what we've got in Mauritania," said Woodside spokesman Rob Millhouse. "It's a huge area where we can go and look, drill a hole if we like, and if we don't like, walk away."

While firms hope to strike what the industry refers to as an "elephant" - a large, oil bearing geological structure - firms are willing to admit that east Africa may provide more frustration than elation.

Gas fields have so far proved more numerous - including Songo Songo off Tanzania and a $1.2 billion project operated by Johannesburg-listed Sasol which began piping natural gas to South Africa from Mozambique in February.

Even if oil is discovered, drillers can only hope to make money if they find reserves which are big enough to be commercially viable.

"We recognise there's a potential for hydrocarbons to be there based on regional geological exploration," said Simon Buerk, spokesman for Shell, which has exploration rights off Tanzania. "The risks are quite high as well because this particular acreage is relatively unexplored."
Despite advances in seismic survey technology in the past decade, a lack of exploration wells in the region makes it harder to interpret raw data, making expensive exploration wells a more risky proposition than in more established zones.

Insecurity

Beyond the lack of data, some of the region's potential strikes remain off limits on security grounds.

Oil exploration in Sudan has been hindered by civil war, although talks between the government and southern rebels have raised hopes of a lasting peace in oil production zones.

Industry experts say the western Ethiopian region of Gambella may contain oil deposits, but hundreds of people were killed in ethnic clashes in December and January in the worst outbreak of violence there for years.

Somalia may have perhaps the greatest potential offshore reserves, but it also the most challenging prospect - having fragmented into fiefdoms run by rival warlords since the overthrow of military ruler Siad Barre in 1991.

But just as Woodside's strike in Mauritania helped fuel interest in less