Australia’s Woodside is expanding into Africa with the acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ assets in Senegal.
Under a binding Purchase and Sale Agreement (PSA) Woodside will buy all of ConocoPhillips’ interests in Senegal for the purchase price of $350 million, based on an effective date of 1 January 2016, plus a completion adjustment of approximately $80 million.
With the acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ Senegal assets, Woodside will get access to the SNE and FAN deep-water oil discoveries. SNE is one ofthe largest global deepwater oil discoveries since 2014. Woodside estimates that the SNE discoverycontains 560 MMbbl of recoverable oil (at the 2C confidence level, 100%).
Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said the acquisition aligned with the company’s growth strategy byproviding a significant position in an underexplored and highly prospective emerging oil province. TheSNE and FAN discoveries opened up the basin, and recently completed appraisal work has proven up high-quality resources.
“We are taking advantage of our balance sheet to acquire a world-class asset that fits well with ourcapabilities, offers significant future upside in exploration and line-of-sight to near-term oil production.
“It builds on our agreement to acquire a 65% interest in the AGC Profond exploration block located tothe south in the Senegal-Guinea Bissau joint development zone and extends our regional focus in WestAfrica.
He said Woodside was looking forward to working with the Government of Senegal and joint venture participants CairnEnergy, FAR Limited, and Petrosen, the Senegal National Oil Company, to progress the commercialdevelopment of SNE and any future discoveries.
“Woodside will bring to the joint venture expertise in deep water drilling, development and operation ofsubsea infrastructure and floating production storage and offloading vessels,” he said.
Completion of the PSA is subject to satisfaction of customary conditions, including Government of Senegal approval and pre-emption and is targeting close by year-end 2016.
