TOTAL has encountered 28 metres of net oil pay in its Ivoire 1X deep-water exploration well off Cote d’Ivoire.
The well is not tested yet, but the result is a boon for the current geologic thinking focused on the West African Transform Margin(WATM), in which the well is located.
WATM refers to the Cretaceous sequence in the south Atlantic that extends from Nigeria in the east to Sierra Leone in the west. Countries in between include Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia, Benin and Ghana.
The prospects of the WATM has recently been dismissed as looking “far less spectacular” than the South Atlantic deepwater tertiary plays unlocked in Angola and Nigeria in the mid to late 90s.
Ivoire 1X was the first to be drilled on the CI-100 licence and it “confirms the extension into Block CI-100 of the already proved active petroleum system in the prolific Tano basin, home to several fields, including Jubilee in Ghana,” TOTAL said in a statement.
The wildcat probe was drilled to a total depth of 5044 metres in water depths of 2280 metres at the block, which lies directly across the maritime border with Ghana.
The oil sands are located in a gross reservoir column of about 100 metres in the Cretaceous TOTAL said the oil is of 35 degrees API quality.
TOTAL and partners plan to appraise the discovery in an ongoing exploration programme, which also includes drilling other targets eastwards of Ivoire 1X.
TOTAL operates CI-100 with 60% stake. Partners include Yam’s Petroleum (25%) and Petroci Holding, the Ivorien state hydrocarbon company (15%).
