Though this can be true there are one major thing you are...

Though this can be true there are one major thing you are missing here. The prospects that APCL have in Gambia can be interlinked the same way that SNE grew. And if you look at their mapped prospects you see that in a best case scenario we are talking >10B barrels of oil. Now that might be my dreaming but if I see a minor chance of that being reality then what about the ones with the experience? I am not saying that it will be like that but remember that FAR and the rest had it wrong in the beginning. It was far bigger than expected and have only grown. What would be the likely scenario for APCL? Who knows. But if it costed me two wells to have it checked out for a 45-50% license share then maybe it would be worth checking out.

Yes, bigger cost but WAY bigger resources... Do you not think that the ones operating in the neighbourhood with more or less a 100% hit rate know what to look for by now? Why did for example Kosmos mention its interest in Gambia? Why are Total talking about deepwater Senegal. Who are in these areas?