US-based oil and gas firm, Murphy Oil Corporation has officially entered Ivory Coast, West Africa to explore oil and gas energynewsafrica.com can report.
The firm recently signed five new production sharing contracts (PSCs) with PETROCI, the national oil company of Ivory Coast.
The deals demonstrate the growing attractiveness of Ivorian brownfield and Greenfield blocks for international operators.
The new portfolio of Murphy E&P is particularly attractive.
Blocks CI-102, CI-531, CI-103 and CI-709 form a straight column that stretches from the shallow waters offshore Abidjan all the way to Deepwater areas where several wells have been drilled.
CI-103 notably holds the Paon deep-water gas and light oil field discovered by Tullow Oil in 2012 and already appraised.
Just north of Paon, Tullow Oil had also drilled the Calao-1X well in 2013, within current block CI-531.
The independent had found good quality reservoir sandstone, although they were water bearing.
CI-709 finally holds development potential thanks to wells previously drilled by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Petroleum in 2016 and 2017, although commercial quantities are yet to be proven.
These include Pelican-1X that intersected around 21.3m of net oil pay in two separate intervals, Rossignol-1X that encountered well-developed sands and roughly 4.6 m of net oil pay on water, and finally Colibri-1X that also hit hydrocarbon pay.