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Hardman Resources obtains pact for exploration off Mauritania

Feb. 3, 1997

West Africa Exploration Tracts [19547 bytes] Exploration may be returning to Mauritania for the first time since 1992-93, when major oil companies withdrew due to hostilities with Western Sahara. Hardman Resources NL, West Perth, Australia, obtained a 24,645 sq km offshore petroleum exploration contract. The pact covers Blocks 3, 4, and 5 in the Senegal-Mauritania coastal basin, the largest marginal basin off West Africa. Mauritania has received World Bank assistance to revive its oil and gas

West Africa Exploration Tracts [19547 bytes]

Exploration may be returning to Mauritania for the first time since 1992-93, when major oil companies withdrew due to hostilities with Western Sahara.

Hardman Resources NL, West Perth, Australia, obtained a 24,645 sq km offshore petroleum exploration contract. The pact covers Blocks 3, 4, and 5 in the Senegal-Mauritania coastal basin, the largest marginal basin off West Africa.

Mauritania has received World Bank assistance to revive its oil and gas sector, and the agreement is the first under new regulations that took effect in late 1996.

The contract allows for 9 years of exploration in three 3 year terms and a 25 year exploitation period plus a 10 year extension. The contract initially calls for acquisition of 500 km of seismic and drilling of one well by September 1999.

If a contractor is the first producer in Mauritania to reach 20,000 b/d of oil, a $6 million premium or 50% of petroleum costs will be added to the contractor's recoverable costs.

Offshore prospects

The contract areas contain a large, mature prospect on Block 3 and other leads and play concepts including a Barremian carbonate bank, Turonian clastics, and in more than 600 ft of water numerous salt dome structures.

The Shafr al Khanjar prospect, identified by Amoco, is in about 177 m of water on Block 3.

It is an east-west, fault-bounded carbonate reef that extends over 17,400 acres and exhibits 270 m of structural closure.

The prospect was proposed to test a carbonate bank edge. The well should penetrate a high energy shelf-edge grainstone to reef facies, Hardman said. Additional structural and stratigraphic trapping potential has been identified in the carbonate bank from detailed studies of seismic velocity data.

Hardman seeks an operator to fully fund a well to test the prospect in exchange for up to a 60% interest in Block 3.

Previous operators drilled 11 exploration wells and acquired more than 36,000 km of seismic data off Mauritania during 1960-92. The well TDs ranged from 7,396 ft to 16,423 ft.

The Neocomian/Upper Jurassic carbonate margin extends for more than 200 km off Mauritania.

Most of the wells have targeted extensive Upper Cretaceous deltaic sediments in the northern part of the basin without success.

Only the last well, Loup de Mer-1, drilled by Amoco in 1992, tested the carbonate platform. Also, rift and prerift sequences have not been explored, and no well has been drilled onshore in the coastal basin.