Tanzania: Ruhuhu basin rights under negotiation

July 1, 2011
Jacka Resources Ltd., Perth, said it’s in exclusive negotiations with the Tanzanian government for exploration rights to 8,400 sq km comprising the entire Ruhuhu basin in southern Tanzania.

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 1
– Jacka Resources Ltd., Perth, said it’s in exclusive negotiations with the Tanzanian government for exploration rights to 8,400 sq km comprising the entire Ruhuhu basin in southern Tanzania.

Jacka said the acreage, across Lake Nyasa from Malawi, holds multiple conventional and unconventional play types. Jacka would be operator with 100% interest in the block.

The block offer came after several months of talks with Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp. regarding oil and gas exploration for this and other blocks in the country, Jacka said.

The northeast-southwest trending Ruhuhu basin, entirely onshore, is among a chain of Karoo basins across southern Africa formed during the break up of Pangea in the late Carboniferous-early Permian.

Conventional and unconventional exploration plays exist, with potential for multiple charge systems being a significant de-risking feature:

• The basal Ruhuhu section contains postglacial, early Permian lacustrine shales, rich in total organic carbon, and modeled to have reached oil mid-maturity in the basin. These lacustrine shales are genetically related to those that have sourced the heavy oil in the Bemolanga tar sands of Madagascar with a reported resource of 22 billion bbl, Jacka said.

• The Ruhuhu basin is truncated to the west by the Lake Malawi (Nyasa) basin of the modern East African rift. The Nyasa basin contains TOC rich sediments similar to those of the genetically related Albert graben in western Uganda, where 1 billion bbl of oil reserves have been proved since 2006.