woodside to buy FAR???, page-24

its called re-awakening. Their last well in 2009 with Anadarko had 15m oilpay & then they sold their interest & got out of africa. Note they were in Senegal onshore briefly in 2001 at the Casamance Block with ROC Oil & the JV didnt proceed further as WPL went ahead north to Mauritania. They basically pulled up stumps in Libya & Algeria.

So what has changed at WPL. Few things. Their Global expl VP is ex-Anadarko & Triton, so knows about WAfr projects quite well. Note Anadarko r JV partners with KOS in Jubilee & Ghana and r drilling their Paon-5A well in Ivory Coast. WPL pulled out of Tanzania recently & r into **on, Cameroon & offsh Morocco. They drilled Cheetah-1 with non-comm shows. So the question is where is the nxt big fish offshore WAfr (apart from Ghana). SNE news flows is what the market needs, not a tight hole policy.

As is the norm in JV's, the current partners in Senegal JV should have first right to exercise their option for FAR. If neither COP or Cairn want to 'top-up' or match a potential offer (hypotheticallY) then there's a process where Petrosen or Senegalese govt can approve a new JV partner. At Jubilee KOS started with 30.9% & brought in Anadarko. 2 of the partners back then, EO Group & Sabre oil sold their share to KOS &Tullow. So thats how Senegal should pan out. WPL can cherry pick asssets & Senegal should fit the bill. They can enjoy dissecting the results from Kora-1 which is in their newly acquired block & reprocess seis to chase further DW leads or go to Gambia, Tortue & Senegal.... plenty of options.

As it is they paid too much for Apache's Oz assets, so much so that Balnaves oilfield isnt living upto its 2P-17 mmbbls, more close to 1P results. Offer for OSH was high for a cashflw generating project. Think Wafr should suit their modus operandi & future 5 yr vision once oil recovers.