Zanzibar begins inaugural offshore licensing round
Zanzibar’s Ministry of Blue Economy and Fisheries has begun a licensing round for bids on eight blocks covering 31,883 sq km.
The offshore acreage holds untapped oil and gas potential with the basin’s evolution dating to early-mid Jurassic, analogous to the adjacent East African basins, according to the Ministry.
The blocks range in size from 2,846 sq km to 5,666 sq km and lie at water depths of 500-3,000 m. Blocks offered include Block 1-A, Block 1-B, Block 1-C, Block 1-D, Block 1-E, Block 1-F, Block 1-G, and Block 1-H.
The Ministry said it defined the bid round areas through prospectivity assessment with encouraging results with data supplier SLB. A total of 10,145 line-km of 2D seismic data is available, it said.
The deadline for bid submission is Sept. 15-16.
Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
