OREANDA-NEWS. October 30, 2015. CGG announced today that it has been appointed as technical consultant by the Gabonese Republic’s Ministry of Petroleum and Hydrocarbons to help with the promotion of its 11th Licensing Round focusing on five highly prospective deepwater blocks.

The round was formally opened on 27th October 2015 by His Excellency, Minister for Petroleum and Hydrocarbons, Mr. Etienne Dieudonn? Ngoubou, at this week’s 22nd Africa Oil Week conference in Cape Town South Africa. The round will then be promoted by a series of road shows starting in Libreville on 24th November, followed by Paris on 26th November, Singapore on 30th November and Houston on 3rd December 2015. A delegation from the Direction Generale des Hydrocarbures (DGH) as well as a technical team from CGG will be attending to answer any questions.

The round will be open for five months starting on 27 October 2015 and bids can be submitted from 15 February 2016 onwards and by no later than 31st March 2016. Prequalification for the bid round will require the purchase of a minimum amount of seismic data.

The deep water of Gabon has significant unexplored potential within a structurally complex setting, particularly in the pre-salt section. In response to the exploration challenges, CGG has been appointed to advise the Gabonese Republic on the promotion of the 11th Licensing Round and has worked directly with the Ministry to acquire over 25,000 km2 of new 3D BroadSeisTM multi-client seismic data as part of an integrated geoscience program to support it. The new survey will enable better imaging of this exciting and underexplored area, and covers areas downdip and adjacent to recent pre-Aptian salt discoveries, such as Leopard, Diaman, Ruche and Tortue. It will benefit from integrated gravity and magnetic interpretation to enhance the pre-salt imaging and additional, complementary datasets including offshore hydrocarbon seeps and a full geological prospectivity report will be available.

Jean-Georges Malcor, CEO, CGG, said: “Ever since we acquired our first geophysical survey there in 1932, CGG has actively supported Gabon’s development of its natural resources. We are delighted to continue our fruitful cooperation with the Gabonese Republic by offering our full portfolio of Geoscience expertise to help promote the 11th Licensing Round. Given the high quality of the intermediate results we have seen so far from our recent BroadSeis survey, we expect the final results to be a significant resource for clients to de-risk this promising exploration arena. We are pleased to announce that several companies have already pre-committed to the dataset.”