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Oil in Senegal

By Carine Frenk
Released: Monday, November 3, 2014
The announcement was made last month by the British oil company Cairn Energy and its partners: a deposit of offshore oil was discovered in Senegal, 100 kilometers off the coast.  Initial estimates of reserves that well exceed 250 million barrels of oil, further studies are underway.

Although the first barrel will not come out of the water for five to six years, oil in Senegal, it is puzzling.  In Dakar, some already think everything will this financial windfall the country needs: a price of diesel and gasoline at the pump down, cheaper transport, more blackouts ...

"The discovery announced by our partners is real, it is not a fiction," launched at a press conference Mamadou Faye, the Director General of the Senegalese public company Petrosen, who pointed out that the oil bill of Senegal "revolves around 10% of gross domestic product. "  According to him, all the technical work has been done in the state of the art, 100 billion CFA francs (150 million euros) has been spent in exploration. "This is a high quality oil," says Mamadou Faye.

Other precision Petrosen: in oil contracts, the share of the state is more than 60% for small deposits and over 80% for large deposits.  This includes the part of Petrosen as a society in the project, the direct part of the State in profits and revenues due to the corporate tax.

Remain many questions, especially concerning the importance and future management of this windfall.  Economist Moubarak Lo noted that other exploration licenses were granted but if we do not find other deposits, the impact of this discovery is not very high.

"2020 is tomorrow: we must ask now the question of transparency," said for his part Paul Dominic Correa, the Civil Forum, which is a member of the Initiative for transparency in the extractive industries. "We need more information on the nature of the contracts and the financial flows that are already engaged if we want that money falls well into the coffers of the state and not in the pockets of our leaders" he concludes.

A source at the Ministry of Energy wants to be reassuring: "President Macky Sall is engaged in a process of transparency. It's his choice and it will stick. " "The only guarantee is good transparency and investment Mubarak insists Lo, this is the only condition for that instead of being a curse that causes embezzlement and conflict oil in Senegal is a blessing" .