Gambia launches new bidding round for offshore block exited by BP

Gambia has launched a new bidding round for offshore Block A1, officials said Nov. 8, after BP exited the field this year and paid the government for suspending drilling at the license.

Bidders have four months to submit their offers, Kanni Touray, deputy commissioner of petroleum at the ministry of petroleum and energy, told Africa Oil Week organized by the Hyve group in Dubai. The license will be for a maximum of 30 years, divided into three exploration periods, she added.

"Our key objective in designing the licensing round is to ensure an attractive fiscal regime with low entry conditions for bidders as well as procurement process and participation rules," Fafa Sanyang, the country's minister of energy and petroleum, said.

BP had signed an agreement on Block A1 with the ministry in April 2019, and had consequently acquired 2D and 3D seismic data in the license. But the company's commitment to drilling an exploration well remained pending, and the COVID-19 pandemic halted a majority of upstream work globally in 2020.

"In July 2020, BP informed the ministry that it would not be able to drill a well in the A1 Block due to a change in its corporate strategy towards low carbon energy," the ministry said in an Aug 12 statement.

Offshore exploration

The West African country hopes to increase offshore exploration as oil prices rebound.

Australia-based explorer FAR Limited is on track to resume drilling at its exploration block offshore The Gambia in the fourth quarter of this year after operations were adversely affected due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent oil price crash.

FAR has contracted to use the Stena IceMAX drillship for the Bambo-1 exploration well, located in Block A2 offshore The Gambia. Three prospects have been identified in Bambo-1, with a total estimated recoverable, prospective resource of 1.118 billion barrels.

If successful, a discovery could result in a standalone development, according to FAR, and would result in The Gambia's first oil production.