Tullow hits oil at Sierra Leone well
A CONSORTIUM of oil companies including UK-listed Tullow Oil said yesterday they discovered a deepwater oil well off the coast of Sierra Leone.
Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum, which leads the group, said its Venus B well has an “active petroleum system”, and said the find raised hopes for more than 30 other prospects the companies have in that part of West Africa.
The oil firms said the discovery potentially opens up a new, 1,100 km-wide, multi-billion-barrel oil frontier in the region.
Tullow, led by chief executive Aidan Heavey, and its partners believe the field could be one of a string of reservoirs that stretch from Ghana to Sierra Leone, across the Ivory Coast and Liberia.
“The significance of Venus-B’s success is that it would bring into play a whole series of prospects that could mirror Jubilee in size,” Richard Griffith at Evolution Securities said.
Tullow Oil has a 10 per cent stake in the project, Anadarko holds a 40 per cent stake, while Spain’s Repsol and Australia’s Woodside Petroleum hold 25 per cent each.
“Venus could contain around 200m barrels of oil, making it a very significant discovery,” said Bernstein oil analyst Ben Dell, using the Jubilee field in Ghana, which has a similar geology, as a guide.
The Jubilee field in Ghana has a resource potential of up to 1.8bn barrels of crude, according to Tullow, Europe’s largest independent oil explorer by market value.
Italian rival Eni is thought to be interested in making a bid for Tullow, which a member of the FTSE 100.
Shares in Tullow closed up 8.4 per cent at 1,187p.