Chariot gets Mauritania extension

Chariot Oil & Gas and partners secured a one-year extension on its current exploration phase of the C-19 license offshore Mauritania, North Africa.

Map from Chariot.

As part of the extension, the partnership committed to undertake seabed coring studies, which will provide further subsurface detail and serve to further de-risk this part of the portfolio.

In 2014, the partnership carried out a significant amount of additional technical work on its 3500sq kmof proprietary 3D seismic data, which included specialized processing, iterative interpretation and spectral decomposition analysis. From this, Chariot identified and matured a significant prospect and lead portfolio which includes four prospects that are now drill ready. These prospects have been independently validated by NSAI and a dataroom is open as part of an additional partnering process.

The prospects in Block C-19 are located down-dip from the legacy Ras al Beida-1 well which encountered good, thick sands and extensive oil shows and are along strike from the Aigrette-1 well that encountered an oil leg in a 20m sand interval.

Chariot identified four priority prospects all of which have been independently audited by Netherland Sewell and Associates (NSAI), who estimate that the single target PA-1 and MA-1 prospects have gross mean prospective resources of 431 MMbbl and 588 MMbbl, respectively.

The KT-1 and BFT-1 prospects are interpreted to comprise stacked deepwater sandstone targets located in a combination of structural and stratigraphic trapping geometries in the Cretaceous and overlying Tertiary section. Individual targets in these prospects are estimated by NSAI to contain a range of gross mean prospective resources up to 434 MMbbl.

"The evaluation of the prospectivity across this acreage has taken longer than expected, however we are very pleased with the scale of the substantial prospect and lead inventory that has been generated as a result of this work. Success from drilling any one of these prospects would be transformational for Chariot,” Larry Bottomley, Chariot chief executive said. “Mauritania continues to be a region of focus for giant potential, deepwater exploration, with a number of wells due to be drilled by third parties in the coming year. The ongoing studies will further advance our understanding prior to entering the drilling phase." 

Chariot is the operator of the C-19 Block with 55% interest. Partners include Cairn Energy (35%) and the Société Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures et de Patrimoine Miner (SMHPM) (10%).