East Africa: What’s Happening down South?

The east African coast has seen a host of exploration activities and success in the recent decade. Companies with sound technical and creative exploration plans have ventured, and their risks have been vastly rewarded. Tullow Oil, Anadarko and Sasol are leading the pack, while many other major players are waiting in line to get a piece of the pie. Uganda has seen an acceleration of hydrocarbon projects for the production of its potential along its Tertiary rift structures. Mozambique’s success is based on the production of Pande and Temane gas fields and on the activity in the Rovuma basin.

It is further south along the east coast where keen interest has been kick started. The South African east coast with Zululand and Durban basins, has benefited from success stories of its northern neighbours. South Africa has awarded various licences to exploration companies to venture and explore the vast areas in this frontier region. This success is in part based on the reprocessing of existing vintage 2D seismic data and exploration companies venturing into exciting new opportunities.

The reprocessed data has confirmed the existence of previously mapped potential and has added a host of new exciting opportunities. Opportunities include amongst others; Jurassic rift plays, Cretaceous lowstand basin floor fan structures, gas escape/chimneys and stacked drapes of basin floor fans above basement highs and over 200km2 of Tertiary Tugela river slope channel and fan systems. Fluid inclusion studies, probable flat spot identification and exciting new analogs make this area ripe for discovery.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90142 © 2012 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, April 22-25, 2012, Long Beach, California