November 17, 2011 Tangiers Petroleum Seeks AIM Listing And Farm-In Partners To Advance Its Portfolio Of Potential Supergiants http://oilbarrel.com/news/tangiers-petroleum-seeks-aim-listing-and-farm-in-partners-to-advance-its-portfolio-of-potential-supergiants
The coming year promises to be an exciting one for followers of exploration start-up Tangiers Petroleum. The ASX-quoted company, which has a Q4 AIM listing in its sights, is crunching through seismic, with plans to acquire additional 3D in the near-term, ahead of a multi-well programme in 2012 on its properties in Morocco and Australia. And these are not just any properties. The small cap reckons its acreage off Morocco’s Atlantic coastline is home to multi-billion barrel prospects while its position in Australia’s Southern Bonaparte Basin has LNG-sized gas potential. It isn’t alone in making these assumptions: independent consultant Netherland Sewell & Associates believes the Tarfaya Offshore Block in Morocco, with Tangiers holding a 75 per cent interest, could host prospective resources of up to five billion barrels of oil in four identified prospects while analysts at Old Park Lane Capital use a more conservative but still very material unrisked best estimate resource of 867 million barrels of oil. In Australia, where Tangiers has a 90 per cent interest in licence WA-442-P, NT/P81, which straddles the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory, there are two huge gas plays which together could hold over 107 TCF of gas in place. Getting these supergiants drilled up is going to take a lot more cash than micro-cap Tangiers currently has at its disposal. It’s for this reason the Perth-based company plans to farm-out its sizeable equity positions to win a free carry through next year’s work programme, when up to five high impact wells could be drilled. The company doesn’t need to drill these wells in 2012 but as company chairman Mark Ceglinski, a corporate financier specialising in the natural resources sector, told delegates at oilbarrel.com’s September conference, a small company needs to drill wells to be a viable investment prospect for its shareholders “and these prospects are just too good to be sitting around”. The 15,000 sq km Tarfaya permit lies offshore northern Morocco in relatively shallow waters – on average less than 200 metres deep. Only four wells have been drilled on this huge tract of acreage, three in the 1960s and one in 1985. All had hydrocarbon shows. Some 20 km to the west of the licence lies the Cap Juby heavy oil field, discovered by ESSO in 1969, proof that there’s an active petroleum system in the area. The NSAI report focused on four Jurassic-aged prospects – la Dam, Assaka, Trident and Tarfaya Marin-1, but didn’t deal with the Zeus and Little Zeus prospects which represent a newer Top Jurassic play concept that opens up additional upside across the block. ISIS Petroleum Consultants (ISIS) is expected to come up with independent probabilistic evaluation on volumes for Zeus and Little Zeus before year-end, with Ceglinski describing Zeus as “a monster” with a closure of more than 1,000 sq km. There is also a raft of additional Cretaceous leads on the Tarfaya Block as mapped by Shell in 1992, with a prospective resource potential that is expected to rival the existing inventory of Jurassic prospects. Back on home turf, Tangiers has a 90 per cent interest in two permits in the Southern Bonaparte Basin off Australia. Here, there are existing oil discoveries, Turtle and Barnett, which were made back in the 1980s and are candidates for a small development project. This is nice to have in the back pocket but it isn’t why Tangiers is interested in the acreage: the ASX-quoted company is instead eyeing the deep gas it reckons lies beneath the known shallow oil deposits. This is real big ticket exploration. The gas prospects are deep – Nova crests at 3,500 metres, Super Nova at 6,000 metres – and the probabilistic
RRS Price at posting:
14.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
