MOROCCO – Europa Oil & Gas, the oil and gas exploration, development and production company, has launched a formal process for the farm-out of a stake in the Inezgane Offshore Permit, an 11,228 square kilometre area offshore Morocco.
The company describes it as a “high-impact exploration opportunity in a highly underexplored area” whilst highlighting that the acreage is on the same geological trend with major oil and gas discoveries along the west coast of Africa.
Europa has to date identified more than 2 billion barrels of exploration potential across its ‘top 5’ ranked prospects.
“We are delighted to announce the launch of the Farmout initiative of the Inezgane Licence which represents not only a high-impact exploration opportunity for Europa but also sits comfortably within the company’s strategy of creating a balanced portfolio of complementary assets,” said chief executive Simon Oddie.
“The work completed thus far has focused on the top five ranked prospects which each have mean resources in excess of 200 mmboe at the Albian level, with total mean resources in excess of two billion barrels.
“These are extremely positive numbers for the company and we hope to capitalise on the prospectivity demonstrated along this prolific geological trend. I look forward to providing further information in due course.”
Europa also said that Morocco offers excellent fiscal terms with a low tax take. It noted that several major and midcap firms are present in the region including ENI, Hunt, Genel and ConocoPhillips
Inezgane represents a high-impact exploration opportunity in a very little explored region of the world, representing an excellent farm-out opportunity for companies specializing in exploration.
So far, Europa’s work has focused on the top five ranked prospects namely Alpha, Charlie, Falcon, Turtle and Sandpiper; these prospects have a wide range of structural styles including 4-way dip, salt flank and salt under-hang, the company explained in the press release.
Each has stacked potential at the Albian, Campanian and Barremian levels, all within the Cretaceous section, and all five prospects have mean resources in excess of 200 mmboe at the Albian level which remains the primary target.
The total mean resource is in excess of 2 billion barrels (oil equivalent) at the Albian level with significant additional reserves potential at the Campanian and Barremian levels which represent secondary and tertiary targets.
