Exploration firm aims to drill for oil next year
An exploration company has said it expects to start drilling for oil in Seychelles next year after establishing the best possible site in its two designated areas.
The president of the Black Marlin company, Richard Schmitt, gave details to the media on Monday afternoon at the Seychelles Petroleum Company’s (Sepec) headquarters at the New Port.
The Dubai-based firm has a seven-year lease with the government and is now into the third year of the agreement.
Also present was Chris Stone representing the Avana Petroleum group, a partner of Black Marlin in the Seychelles exploration project, and Captain Guy Adam, the Sepec chairman and chief executive.
Mr Schmitt said progress so far on the project is satisfactory and encouraging.
“We are still in the exploration phase at the moment and are on the verge of starting to prepare for the drilling stage, which we expect to start next year since we have to bring in all the equipment needed such as oil rigs,” he said.
“We’ve highlighted several promising prospects already, but we need to do some more seismic analysis first, although those we’ve identified show signs of being giant fields.”
Black Marlin also has exploration activities in other countries including Madagascar, Kenya and Ethiopia.
Mr Schmitt said the company has spent tens of millions of dollars in collecting seismic information about Seychelles and expects to spend even more on drilling operations in the coming one and a half years.
Black Marlin has two designated sites for its operations, on the Seychelles Plateau, and will carry out environmental impact assessments before the drilling starts.
Captain Adam said the plateau has shown signs of having oil, although deeper waters are usually believed more likely to have major deposits.
“Lately a large number of discoveries have been made in deep water, but even on the plateau the assessment of all the seismic studies indicates that there could be very large reserves of petroleum,” he explained.
Sepec, which has a share in Black Marlin, is set to benefit from any oil or gas discovered in its operations going on anywhere across the globe.
The other firm with a licence to carry out explorations in Seychelles’ waters is American company Petroquest.