Cape Town, SA, November 5, 2011 – Waters off East Africa have yet to produce a commercially viable oil source but gas discoveries off Mozambique and Tanzania have prompted lots of interest.

Following are some facts about the state of exploration in the frontier hydrocarbon industry of East Africa, which is in focus this week at a series of conferences that comprise the annual Africa Oil Week in Cape Town.

- According to Michael Blaha, the executive chairman of Britain's Cove Energy, there have only been 500 wells drilled in East Africa.

By way of contrast, he told the conference that 15,000 have been sunk in the established hydrocarbon province of West Africa and 20,000 in North and Central Africa.

So East Africa accounts for only around 1.5 percent of the wells drilled in Africa.

- Some countries have had virtually no exploration. Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 but has not been formally recognized internationally, lies near major oil regions, but has only had 21 wells drilled.

- Even by the region's under explored standards, the coastal margins of Tanzania and Mozambique have seen only limited probes.

But shallow reefs and other aspects of the coastal geography make this difficult to explore and industry sources say the inshore petroleum geography remains largely unknown.

- Onshore, Uganda discovered commercial quantities of hydrocarbons in the Lake Albert rift basin along its western border with Democratic Republic of Congo, and exploration firms including Tullow Oil estimate reserves of up to 2.5 billion barrels with production expected to start in 2012.

Government estimates are as high as 6 billion barrels but much exploration remains to be done.

Source: Reuters

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