By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 19 – South Africa awarded a 12-month technical cooperation permit to three companies to study data on shale gas in the Karoo basin in central South Africa.
The recipients are Sasol Petroleum International Pty. Ltd, Statoil ASA, and Chesapeake Energy Corp. The permit covers 27.1 million acres, mainly in the Free State with smaller tracts in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The permit conveys the exclusive right to study shale prospectivity without surface activity or drilling. The awardees will study existing geological information and analyze cores obtained by Soekor Inc. in a search for shale oil in the 1970s-80s.
Falcon Oil & Gas Ltd., Denver, has a similar 1-year permit to study 7.5 million acres, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC has a permit on 185,000 acres covering much of the southern half of the country (OGJ Online, Nov. 2, 2009).