THE latest data from oil and gas exploration efforts show further extensive and ”very significant” fields are likely to be found off South Africa’s West Coast, Parliament’s minerals and energy portfolio committee heard on Wednesday.
Briefing committee members, Petroleum Agency SA commercial manager Stephen Mills said there was a possibility of gas resources as vast as 21-trillion cubic feet off the Cape’s western shores.
”If we put the West Coast and the (western portion) of the Cape’s south coast together, then we’re at 40-trillion cubic feet, which is a massive amount of gas,” he said.
By comparison, the Cape south coast ”F-A” gas field — at the core of the Mossgas project — was about one trillion cubic feet.
Prospecting for oil and gas along the West Coast takes place in an area that stretches over a thousand kilometres — from a point about 400km west of the mouth of the Orange River, to about 450km south of Cape Town.
The area is split into six prospecting blocks. The southern-most pair –blocks five and six — are still ”open”, and no prospecting licenses have been issued for them, although they are being surveyed.
Currently, most of the off-shore prospecting taking place within South Africa’s western waters is being done in the southern half of the ”Orange Basin”.
The northern part of the basin — essentially the river’s submerged delta — is in Namibian waters, and contains the existing Kudu gas field.
On the prospects for oil and gas off the West Coast, Mills said the agency was ”excited by the possibilities presented by the deep-water areas” that were currently being explored.
However, there was ”not yet any real basis for an expectation of oil production from the West Coast in the next five to 10 years”.
But gas resources were another story altogether.
”In terms of resources, there may be as much as 21-trillion cubic feet (at a probability of 50 percent) on the West Coast, and 19-trillion cubic feet in the blocks making up the western end of the South Coast.”
These were ”very significant numbers”, Mills said.
”While it is unlikely that more than a minority of the gas in the resource category will be converted to reserves, these numbers are certainly a source of considerable optimism at the agency in view of… the development of a vibrant up-stream industry in South Africa.
”All other things being equal, we can reasonably expect the discovery of extensive deposits of oil and gas in the Orange Basin.”
Mills distinguished between oil and gas ”reserves” and ”resources”.
”Reserves are well documented, proved and bankable, whereas resources are educated guesses based on limited information, and analogies with similar (fields) as they occur elsewhere in the world,” he said. – Sapa