Mozambique’s INP denies any new oil discovery in Inhambane

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Mozambique’s INP denies any new oil discovery in Inhambane

6:48 CAT | 28 Feb 2017

Sasol (File photo)

Mozambique’s National Petroleum Institute (INP) has denied claims, apparently made on Monday by an executive of the South African petrochemical company Sasol, that there has been any new oil discovery in the southern province of Inhambane.

A Tuesday press release by the INP notes that Sasol has been opening new production wells for oil and gas since mid-2016. These are part of Sasol’s light oil project in Inhassoro district, which forms part of the overall development plan for the Pande and Temane gas fields. Sasol has been exploiting these fields since 2004, and exports much of the gas by pipeline to its chemical plants in the South African city of Secunda.

According to the INP, in late August 2016, in one of the new Temane wells, identified as T-27, Sasol discovered “previously unknown confined reservoirs of gas and petroleum, the commercial viability of which should be assessed”.

So far, the INP release adds, five new production wells have been drilled in the area covered by Sasol’s production sharing contract, three in Temane containing gas, and two in Inhassoro, containing oil. The new discoveries, including T-27, were promptly notified to the Mozambican authorities in August and September last year.

Since then, the INP adds, no other discovery has been notified. Hence references to petroleum production can only refer to the Inhassoro light oil project, which was approved in January 2016.

The INP assures the public that the Mozambican government will use all the means at its disposal to make any mineral resource discovery known to Mozambicans at first hand.

This is strikingly different from the claim made on Monday in a report from the Reuters news agency, which made it seem that new oil discoveries had very recently been made in Inhambane. Indeed, by using the word “off”, the report implied that these were offshore wells.

The report cited a Sasol executive, Stephen Cornell, as saying that four wells (out of a planned 12) had given positive results, two for gas and two for oil. “These will be the first oil wells in Mozambique that go to full development. Probably in two, maximum three years”, Cornell supposedly said.

But if, as the INP release states, there have been no new discoveries since August, either Reuters got the story seriously wrong, or Cornell was talking up talking up discoveries that had been made months earlier, in the context of a well-known project.

Source: AIM