Gabon has extended the bid submission deadline for the 11th Gabon Deep Water Licensing round, which was formally opened on October 27th 2015.
According to information shared by the French seismic company CGG, the bids extension was announced at the 6th African Petroleum Congress & Exhibition in Abuja last week.
The new deadline for bid submissions is now April 29th, 2016, which, CGG says, gives interested companies an extra month to evaluate the anticipated update to the fiscal terms by the DGH due to be announced in the first week of April 2016.
The 11th Licensing Round which will focus on five blocks covering some of the country’s key deep water acreage in the highly prospective South Gabon Salt Basin.
According to the Gabonese government, in response to the exploration challenges CGG has been appointed to advise the Direction Generale des Hydrocarbures (DGH) on the promotion of this license round and has worked directly with the Ministry to acquire over 25,000 km² of new 3D BroadSeisTM multi-client seismic data.
During the opening ceremony of the 11th licensing round, Minister for Petroleum, Etienne Dieudonné Ngoubou , said:
“The Oil Ministry has very high hopes for Gabon’s new 11th licensing round and are excited by the opportunities for the successful development of this highly prospective region. New deep-water exploration wells offshore Gabon, such as Shell’s recent Leopard discovery, indicate a significant pre-salt basin and the new 3D multi-client data acquired by CGG greatly upgrades the resolution of the pre-salt image, further enhancing the chances of exploration success.”