Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd. signed a farm-out agreement with the Lunn Family Trust to acquire an additional 6.25% stake in Block 3B/4B offshore South Africa.
Lunn Family Trust is a shareholder of Ricocure (Proprietary) Limited.
Subject to regulatory approvals, Eco Atlantic’s wholly owned subsidiary, Azinam Limited’s participating stake in Block 3B/4B will increase to 26.25%.
Gil Holzman, Eco’s chief executive said, “We are seeing growing industry interest in the entire Orange Basin and in particular in Block 3B/4B and are therefore very happy to have managed to increase our WI on the Block.”
Eco’s strategic partners in the Block are Africa Oil Corporation (Operator – 20%) and Ricocure, which will hold the remaining 53.75% participating interest.
The 3B/4B Block covers an area of ~17,581km² and lies in water depths ranging from 300-2500 meters (m). The block partners are currently reprocessing a large 3D seismic survey that will be used to high-grade leads towards identifying drilling targets and preparing for a potential drilling campaign next year.
Block 3B/4B, is located between 120-250 kilometers (kms) offshore South Africa in the Orange Basin directly south of the prolific multibillion barrels discoveries offshore Namibia announced earlier this year by Shell (Graff-1) and TotalEnergies (Venus-1).
These two breakthrough discoveries off the Namibia coast have turned the Orange basin into Africa’s newest exploration hotspot.
Eco Atlantic plans to drill the Gazania-1 well on Block 2B, offshore South Africa, in September. It targets 349 million barrels.
Not only have the two breakthrough discoveries increased interested in the Orange basin. They have also spurred renewed interest across the Atlantic, with Argentina and Uruguay looking to make discoveries in their offshore acreages with similar geological characteristics.
Eco Atlantic has interest in acreage in the deepwaters offshore Guyana where 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources have been found since 2015.
