A British unit of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) has partnered with an Australian firm to explore emerging oil basins off the Senegalese and Gambian coasts of West Africa, reports United Press International.
The deal between CNOOC and Melbourne-based FAR Ltd, gives both players the ability to partner up in evaluating, bidding, negotiating and managing any joint ventures or buy-in opportunities for oil and gas in the broader Mauritania-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau deepwater basin.
FAR is an independent oil and gas exploration company focused on African offshore oil basins.
The FAR-CNOOC pact follows FAR’s agreement this week to buy additional oil acreage off the coast of Gambia from Houston-based ERIN Energy Corp. The two blocks of Gambian acreage hold an estimated 1 billion barrels of unrisked oil and are close to FAR’s SNE oil field off Senegal.