Anadarko may have found new oil field in Africa

Oil company Anadarko with partners Woodside, Repsol, and Tullow, the UK-listed oil company may have established a new oil field that stretches 1,100km along the coast from Ghana to Sierra Leone in Africa.

The announcement will be made off the back of discoveries made by the Venus well Anadarko has been drilling off Sierra Leone, people close to the US company said. Anadarko and Tullow have made a bet on the coastline, snapping up rights to explore the area at low prices when their oil reserves were unknown. Woodside and Repsol, which each hold 25 per cent of the Sierra Leone asset, will also benefit. Anadarko owns a 40 per cent share, while Tullow has 10 per cent.

The Venus well does not prove that the area is full of oil, but it makes it more likely and will sharpen bigger companies’ interests. The discovery will also be news to the governments of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone, none of which are big oil producers. But they have watched Ghana leap from being a cocoa exporter with no oil to a country expected to become one of the world’s top-50 oil producers when the Jubilee field begins to pump next year. The Jubilee field is Africa’s largest deep water field and is thought to hold as many as 2bn barrels of oil, while the coastline could increase that.

Tags:  Africa, oil field