Dr. Anongporn Intawong, Team Leader Geoscientist at seismic surveys provider Spectrum, believes there could be a giant future discovery off South Africa’s coast. Intawong delivered a presentation ‘Future giant discovery in the Outeniqua Basin, offshore South Africa’ at Finding Petroleum’s event Finding East & Southern African Oil & Gas in London last week. 

“What we are seeing is that [there] might be a future giant discovery in this basin,” Intawong said at the event, reports Rigzone, whose assistant European editor Andreas Exarheas tweeted a photo from the presentation.

Spectrum’s Intawong did not quantify the size of possible future discoveries, but reminded the audience that previous discoveries in Outeniqua Basin have yielded recoverable reserves of up to 314 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The potential giant discoveries could help South Africa boost its gas-to-power program to reduce reliance on coal-fired power generation.

Although many companies, including majors ExxonMobil and Total SA, have acquired rights to explore offshore South Africa, uncertainties over pending legislation remain. These uncertainties are a major deterrent to active exploration drilling, which is already struggling from the oil price crash and the difficult conditions for drilling in the area.
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According to Spectrum’s Intawong at last week’s event – Rigzone reports - South Africa’s new laws on regulating the petroleum industry are expected to be passed in the middle of this year.

South Africa has been planning to separate the oil and gas regulations from the current Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, with an upstream gas bill that would govern exploration and gas concessions, and a gas amendment bill that would regulate the midstream part of the gas value chain.

The bill is still being debated at various legislation levels, and international companies are probably waiting to see a final adopted law before committing more investments into exploration.

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