Chariot gets more time to explore offshore Mauritania

Chariot Oil & Gas Limited has secured a one year extension on the current exploration phase of the C-19 licence in Mauritania, as the evaluation of the prospectivity across this acreage has taken longer than expected, said the company. 

Chariot holds 55% interest as the operator, while its partners Cairn Energy (Cairn) and the SociétéMauritanienne des Hydrocarbures et de Patrimoine Miner (SMHPM) hold 35% and 10% respectively. The company said that the group will undertake seabed coring studies, which will provide further subsurface detail and serve to further de-risk this part of the portfolio.

According to the press release, the Partnership carried out a significant amount of additional technical work during 2014, on its 3,500km2 of proprietary 3D seismic data which included specialised processing, iterative interpretation and spectral decomposition analysis.

The company said that it identified and matured a significant prospect and lead portfolio from this, which includes four prospects that are now drill ready and that these prospects have been independently validated by NSAI and a dataroom is open as part of an additional partnering process.

The company further informs that the prospects in Block C-19 are located down-dip from the legacy Ras al Beida-1 well which encountered good, thick sands and extensive oil shows and are along strike from the Aigrette-1 well which encountered an oil leg in a 20m sand interval.

Priority prospects

According to Chariot, four priority prospects have been identified, all of which have been independently audited by Netherland Sewell and Associates (NSAI), who estimate that the single target PA-1 and MA-1 prospects have gross mean prospective resources of 431 mmbbls and 588 mmbbls respectively. For the KT-1 and BFT-1 prospects, they are interpreted to comprise stacked deep water sandstone targets located in a combination of structural and stratigraphic trapping geometries in the Cretaceous and overlying Tertiary section. The company says that, according to NSAI, individual targets in these prospects are estimated to contain a range of gross mean prospective resources up to 434 mmbbls.

Larry Bottomley, Chief Executive of Chariot, said: “I would like to thank the Ministry of Mines and Energy for its continuing support and cooperation as we look to progress this licence towards drilling. The evaluation of the prospectivity across this acreage has taken longer than expected, however we are very pleased with the scale of the substantial prospect and lead inventory that has been generated as a result of this work.

“Success from drilling any one of these prospects would be transformational for Chariot. Mauritania continues to be a region of focus for giant potential, deep water exploration, with a number of wells due to be drilled by third parties in the coming year. The ongoing studies will further advance our understanding prior to entering the drilling phase.”

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