27-10-00 Scottish independent Dana Petroleum has signed a farm-in agreement with Woodside Mauritania, which offers the subsidiary of Australia's Woodside Petroleum a possible stake in the production-sharing contract covering Mauritania's offshore Block 7. The agreement with existing participants Dana and Hardman Resources NL provides for Woodside to earn a 35 % interest in exchange for a series of payments towards the block exploration programme.
Woodside will make an initial payment to Dana, as operator, towards the cost of approximately 2,000 line km of seismic data currently been acquired from Block 7. Woodside, already operator on Blocks 2 through 6, will share the data and participate in interpretation. The Australian offshoot then has until May 21 next year to decide whether to continue with the forward evaluation programme by contributing to agreed costs on a promoted basis, which is likely to include a 3D shoot prior to exploration drilling.
Dana is operator of the three largest production sharing contracts offshore Mauritania -- Blocks 1, 7 and 8 -- covering a total area in excess of 34,000 sq km, some 40 % of Mauritania's offshore petroleum licensed area. The Aberdeen firm's current seismic programme of approximately 6,000 line km across all three blocks is designed to delineate a number of encouraging prospects. The survey started October 3 using the Veritas vessel New Venture.
Given completion of the Woodside farm-in earnings obligations, Block 7 participant interests would be Dana 51.43 %, Woodside 35 %, Hardman 11.57 %, Elixer 2 %. Dana will remain operator of Blocks 1 and 8 with an 80 % working interest in each.

West Africa is a core business area for Dana with the group already operating offshore Ghana, with a 90 % interest in the Western Tano licence, where Dana made an oil discovery in its first well in March of this year. Dana has since been awarded the operatorship of the Ivory Coast CI-100 licence adjoining the Western Tano discovery area.