Following the sale of the company’s stake in a Senegal license to Woodside Energy, Australian oil explorer FAR Ltd is now set to focus on work in The Gambia. According to the company’s latest planning, FAR expects to resume drilling offshore The Gambia later this year.
FAR and partner Petronas have continued subsurface studies on blocks A2/A5 in support of the upcoming Bambo-1 well, along with regional work to assess the resource potential of other prospects identified on the blocks.
In addition, the processing is underway of seismic data acquired in early 2021 to assist regional well correlations and interpretation, including the use of full-waveform inversion for depth modeling.
Legacy 3D data is also being reprocessed to generate a consistent seismic dataset. The reprocessed data includes ties to nearby wells.
Exceed’s wells management team in Aberdeen is supporting the Bambo campaign. Tendering for services required to drill the well, although most long-lead drilling has been ordered and received, The Gambia’s National Environment Agency has approved the project’s environmental and social impact assessment.
Bambo-1 will be drilled into what is thought to be the southern extension of the Sangomar field reservoirs offshore Senegal to the north, with further plans to deepen the well to an untested play. The combined targets could hold resources of 1 Bbbl.
In FAR’s latest results statement, managing director Cath Norman noted Woodside’s announcement of a $400-million increase in the capex for the deepwater Sangomar field development, due mainly to COVID-19-related delays and the fact that one year from FID, the project is only 24% complete.
FAR’s board recently sanctioned the sale of the company’s interests offshore Senegal, including Sangomar, to Woodside. “Cost blowouts such as this and early on in the development would have been problematic for FAR if we had remained in the development, even if COVID and the oil price rout had not occurred,” Norman said.
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