The Director of Company that is currently charged with the drilling of an exploration well has the following to say in their own publication on their role in The Gambia for the sake of transparency and accountability.
FAR Gambia Ltd (“FGL”) signed a Farm-out Agreement (“FOA”) with a subsidiary of Petroliam Nasional Berhad (“PETRONAS”) to assign a 40% interest in each of the highly prospective offshore petroleum licences, Blocks A2 and A5 in The Gambia. PETRONAS’s subsidiary will fund 80% of total well costs of the Samo-1 exploration well up to a maximum total cost of US$45.0 million.
FGL is expected to be paid estimated cash of US$19 million (as at end June 18) for the reimbursement of back costs and cash consideration.
Ministerial approval of the assignment was given on 23 August 2018.
FGL will retain a 40% working interest through the exploration phase of the A2/A5 licences, including the drilling of the Samo-1 well in Q4 [4th quarter] 2018. FGL is presently operator of the joint venture and PETRONAS has a right to become operator after a discovery in the licences.
The Samo-1 well is expected to be drilled in Q4 [4th quarter] 2018 and will be the first exploration well offshore The Gambia since 1979.
It will be located on the Samo Prospect in the A2 block, approximately 29.6 km south of the discovery well in the giant SNE Field offshore Senegal and on
the same shelf edge trend. There have been 9 successful oil wells drilled by the
RSSD joint venture in Senegal on this trend with a 100% success rate.
FGL estimates the Samo Prospect contains Prospective Resources of 825mmbbls oil (best estimate, 100%, unrisked-refer ASX announcement of 21 Nov 2017).
FGL awarded the drilling contract to a subsidiary of Stena Drilling who will provide the Stena DrillMAX deepwater drillship to drill the Samo-1 well.
FGL also executed a sublease contract with the Senegal RSSD joint venture to use the Dakar shorebase facilities for the Samo-1 drilling operations. These facilities have been used by the RSSD joint venture in the recent 11 well drilling campaigns and the A2/A5 joint ventures will benefit from the experience of the RSSD shorebase team when drilling the Samo-1.
