VenturesNow

Gambia set for oil producers club? First oil well in 40 years planned for country’s offshore

Published

5 years ago

August 25, 2018

FAR Ltd., a company focused on West Africa, said it plans to drill into a basin off the coast of Gambia that could hold hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.

After reviewing seismic data, FAR Ltd. said it selected a final well location for its first drilling effort in the Samo prospect off the coast of Gambia.

Samo is located in the broader Mauritania-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau-Conakry basin and could hold as much as 825 million barrels of oil.

Drilling is scheduled for the fourth quarter and last about 40 days. It will be the first well drilled offshore Gambia in 40 years.

“We are very excited to be drilling the Samo prospect, which is a large prospect along trend from the giant SNE oil field,” FAR Managing Director Cath Norman said in a statement.

“Given the nine successful wells drilled on the shelf to date in Senegal and into the key reservoirs in the Samo prospect, the geological chance of success for drilling this prospect is high for a frontier exploration well.”

Two Gambian blocks combine for an estimated 1 billion barrels of unrisked barrels of oil and are in close proximity to the SNE oil field offshore Senegal, one of the largest finds in recent years.

Navigating West African waters has proved complex amid disputes over their maritime borders.

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VenturesNow

Kenya: Parliament approves appointment of Kamau Thugge as central bank governor

Published

8 hours ago

June 7, 2023

Ifeoluwa Dada

Months after throwing open the position for the country’s top banker, Kenya’s parliament has approved the appointment of Kamau Thugge as the country’s central bank governor.

The National Assembly on Wednesday approved the
appointment of economist and senior civil servant who was nominated by President William Ruto as the next apex bank chief.

Thugge, who served as principal secretary in the finance ministry until mid-2018, was nominated after serving as one of the president’s senior economic advisers since late last year.

He shook off competition from others shortlisted candidates like Adan Mohamed, who served in the cabinet from 2013-2022, with four others also interviewed for the role.

The new central bank governor will be faced with the immediate pressure of stabilizing the country’s monetary policy as the East African giant currently faces a shortage of funds amidst rising public debt.

Despite the odds, the World Bank in a report earlier today expects growth to edge up to 5.0% in 2023, underpinned by a recovery in agriculture.

VenturesNow

Ghana presents ‘working proposal’ for debt restructuring— IMF sources

Published

8 hours ago

June 7, 2023

Ifeoluwa Dada

West African country, Ghana has made a major move at resolving its debt crisis as the country has presented debt restructuring proposal to its creditors.

According to sources quoted by Reuters, a “working proposal” has been submitted to help the country escape its worst economic crisis in a generation.

One of the sources revealed that the proposal was a first attempt to engage the official creditor committee after its formation in May. It should be recalled that the Paris Club last month announced that official sector of creditors of Ghana had formed a committee co-chaired by China and France for debt restructuring talks.

The plan is to end restructuring of domestic debt before turning to negotiations with its official bilateral creditors and international bondholders, a government official said.

Ghana is one of several cash-strapped countries facing unprecedented delays in getting bailouts as China, its biggest bilateral creditor with about $1.7 billion of debt and Western economies disagree over how debt relief should be structured.

The first formal review of the programme will hold in the coming months as an IMF team will visit Ghana between 8th and 15th of June.