Sierra Leone to hold fourth offshore licensing round in 1H 2018

Sierra Leone’s Fourth Offshore Petroleum Licensing Round will take place between mid-January and the end of May 2018.

This was announced by the Director General of the Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone (PDSL) Raymond Kargbo during the Africa Oil Week Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The licensing round will be exclusively supported by the Getech Group through its wholly owned subsidiary ERCL.

Getech said that the ERCL and the Petroleum Directorate have been working together since 2016 providing data required to review Sierra Leone’s proven prospectivity.

Through Data Rooms in Freetown and London, investors can access 15,000 line kilometers of 2D seismic, more than 10,000 square kilometers of 3D seismic which includes PSDM volumes reprocessed by previous operators, and all wells from the 2009-2013 drilling campaigns which produced four discoveries.

The 3D seismic data and wells are available to license from the PDSL and will be delivered by ERCL.

Getech added that some other products, built by the company using the government’s released 3D seismic and well database, would be available. These include the Sierra Leone Digital Atlas and Sierra Leone Petroleum Geology Report.

Also, Getech’s large potential fields database and regional reports are also available to assist in evaluating the Sierra Leone margin.

Jonathan Copus, CEO of the Getech Group, said: “The Getech Group is proud to be working in partnership with the Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone during this exciting new phase for the country’s petroleum sector.

“Located on a margin that is bookended by major discoveries in Senegal, Mauritania, and Ghana, Sierra Leone’s offshore waters contain proven petroleum systems that we believe to be conjugate to major discoveries in South America.”

“As exploration interest steps up in the neighboring waters of Guinea, potential investors are able to access an extremely high quality technical database to assist in their evaluation of the undoubted potential of the Sierra Leone margin. We look forward to the Fourth Licensing Round and assisting the Directorate in attracting investment in the upstream petroleum sector of Sierra Leone.”