Lunch'n Think Webinar: Is Offshore South Africa an emerging 'Super Basin'?
.....will the region join Offshore Mocambique as a 'Super Basin'?
Free
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Neil Hodgson
» VP geoscience
» Searcher Seismic
Full Agenda
Friday, April 30, 2021
Webinar
Online
At one time, not so long ago, Southern Africa was considered somewhat of a backwater for E&P, based on earnest reviews about the low likelihood of rich source rocks offshore and therefore the absence of working petroleum systems.
In many ways these negative perceptions were re-enforced by the discovery of relatively small amounts of gas offshore Namibia, largely in the as-yet-undeveloped Kudu discovery.
The discovery of ‘LNG-scale’ gas resources in Mocambique added a new dimension of course and whenever the now proven reserves come finally into production then offshore Mocambique may well be awarded ‘Super Basin’ status.
The presentation – by Searcher Seismic – in this Webinar poses the question as to whether, given the recent discovery by Total and partners of apparently significant gas condensate resources offshore South Africa, the region could be considered as an ‘emerging Super Basin’?
David Bamford is well known around the oil & gas industry both as an explorer and a geophysicist. He holds a Physics degree from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham.
Since 2004, he has been a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc, being recruited for this position especially for his exploration knowledge. He serves on the Nominations and Remuneration Committees, and was chairman of the latter, and Senior Independent Director, for 3 years prior to his retire from the board at the end of April 2014.
He was on the board of Premier Oil from May 2014 to May 2016.
He retired from BP plc in 2003, his last four positions being Chief Geophysicist (1990-1995), Business Unit Leader (General Manager) for first West Africa and then Norway (1995-1999), and finally Head of Exploration until 2003.
He has served on the boards of Paras Ltd, a small exploration and IS/IT consulting company in which he held 22% equity, until its sale to RPS Energy in 2008 and Welltec a/s, a Danish well engineering company, as the nominee of the private equity investor Riverside.
From 2012 to 201 he was on the board of ASX-quoted Australia Oriental Energy as a non-executive director.
He was a founder of Richmond Energy Partners, a small oil & gas research house, and several media companies that focus on the oil & gas sector, and has served as an advisor to Alliance Bernstein, Opus Executive, the Parkmead Group plc, and Kimmeridge Energy LLP. Since retiring from BP, he has undertaken asset and company valuation projects for investment banks, hedge funds and small oil companies.
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Talk Description
Neil Hodgson of Searcher will discuss and reveal the hydrocarbon stories behind the imminent flurry of exploration activity that is heralding in a new age of wealth and low carbon energy security offshore South Africa.
South Africa has three oceanic margins and of them have markedly different slope and basin floor play types that together have the potential to ignite an explosion of success, ushering in not one, but three Superbasins. The blue touch-paper is lit already in the South Outeniqua Basin off the southern coast of South Africa, where Total’s recent Brulpadda-1 and Luiperd-1 wells have found close to a billion barrels of oil equivalent gas and condensate already. The Basin floor turbidites of the Albian reservoir appear to have been derived from the uplifted margins of the Atlantic and pooled in a unique hinterland basin to the east by the north side of the Agulhas-Falklands Fracture zone (AFFZ).
This astonishing transform fault lay at the southern end of the rift that tore Gondwana apart, and is where early cretaceous source and reservoir rocks have been brought together in a string of pearls that Total have just begun to thread. These resources will be developed to bring much needed low carbon energy security to South Africa along with industry and wealth.
To the east of Outeniqua, the passive margin from the Transkei to the Durban basins lies across on the southern, transform side of the AFFZ. Here Aptian source rocks feed slope channels and fans that poured down from the southern margin of Africa. Extraordinarily this area is totally unexplored todate but Major Oil companies such as Shell and Eni have taken exciting acreage positions.
Lastly, to the west of South Africa lies another pre-eruptive hotspot; - the Southern half of the Orange Basin Delta. This is drawing particular attention because Total is planning to drill the Venus-1 well in southern Namibia, in a deep-water setting that easily extrapolates into South Africa. The well will target turbidite fans onlapping the west side of the volcanic seaward dipping reflector (SDR) structure that characterizes this margin. Underneath these sands lie an Aptian sequence, penetrated by DSDP well 361 offshore South Africa. Should this source-reservoir pair be effective it will establish a chain of prospectivity running through western South African waters of astonishing scale. Shell is also planning to drill in a similar deep water setting in the Orange Basin in Namibia, in a slope channel setting but again with huge extrapolative plays in South Africa.
All three Margins have huge oil and gas potential for South Africa. Join Neil to hear how the stage is set, and the fuse lit, for the next few years of prolific exploration on these margins.
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Neil Hodgson is VP Searcher Seismic, a company which provides high quality exploration data and leading edge tech to the global exploration industries. He is formerly executive VP geoscience with Spectrum ASA, and exploration manager at Matra Petroleum, Premier Oil and GB Group.
Searcher Seismic
Searcher provides high quality exploration data and leading edge tech to the global exploration indu
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