Western Geophysical to survey deepwater offshore Senegal

July 9, 1997 Interest in West African deepwater (over 1000 m) hydrocarbon exploration has significantly increased, driven by large finds and the continuing developments in offshore technologies that have allowed exploratory drilling in deeper waters. Oil companies realise that in order to substantially increase their reserves, they need to invest in deep waters where giant fields exist as production from many of the shallower, near-shore fields is declining. To facilitate the exploration of deepwater areas, Western Geophysical has embarked on another speculative seismic data acquisition programme covering offshore waters of Senegal.
Western Geophysical, in conjunction with Petrosen, has just completed the acquisition of 1700 km of new speculative seismic data in the St. Louis Profond, Cayar Profond, Rufisque Profond, and Sangomar Profond blocks in deep waters offshore Senegal. Data have also been collected in the Casamance II, III, and Casamance Profond blocks in the southern Senegalese offshore. The data have been collected by Western's 2-D seismic vessel, M/V Western Wave, deploying the Titan streamer and recording system, sleeve air guns, as well as Western's interactive Omega(R) seismic processing system for onboard quality control.
Data are currently being processed at Western's London processing centre. The final processed data set is expected to be available for delivery in the late summer 1997, allowing for a full evaluation of the blocks and preparation of bids for acreage in the next Senegal licensing round, expected in spring 1998. Initial processed results indicate that this area may be very promising.
To complement these newly acquired data, Western is also involved in reprocessing existing data from its African marine reconnaissance survey. This survey consists of 28000 line km of 2-D data collected during the mid- 1970s in a series of traverses from Gibraltar to Cape Town. Western will eventually reprocess all of these data, but is currently working on the data that lie offshore Senegal.