Forbes Piece: Crucial West African LNG Project Struggles To Achieve First Gas

YANTAI, CHINA - MAY 31: Aerial view of a self-elevating accommodation vessel, which will serve the Phase I project of BP's Greater Tortue-Ahmeyim (GTA) oilfield offshore Mauritania and Senegal, after the delivery ceremony at a shipyard of Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore Limited, a subsidiary company of China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd. (CIMC), on May 31, 2022 in Yantai, Shandong Province of China. (Photo by Tang Ke/VCG via Getty Images)

[Note: This story is also published at Forbes.com]

Increasing global demand for exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has driven billions of dollars in investments in new export infrastructure in countries that are home to large reserves of natural gas. Once such project that promises to become an economic and societal game-changer for two developing West African nations has not received much media attention to this point, but that is likely to change in the months to come as it advances towards initial production.

Once completed, that project, the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) export facility, appears poised to become a catalyst for economic development in the nations of Senegal and Mauritania in the same way the development by an ExxonMobilXOM-led consortium of the Stabroek block offshore Guyana has become for that South American country. The GTA project is operated by BP, with non-operating interests held by Kosmos EnergyKOS, Senegalese state-owned Petrosen and Mauritanian national oil company Société mauritanienne des hydrocarbures (SMHSMH). GTA will, when placed into service, become the deepest African LNG project, sited atop 2 km of water.

Feedstock for GTA will be derived from a pair of adjacent offshore natural gas fields, the Tortue field offshore Mauritania, and the Ahmeyim field offshore Senegal. The Tortue field was discovered in 2015 with the drilling of the Tortue 1 well to a depth of 2.7 km. Ahmeyim, located in the Saint Louis Offshore Profund block, was discovered a year later with the drilling of the Ahmeyim 2 well at a depth of 5.2km.

Shortly after the completion of the Ahmeyim 2 well, BP entered into a deal to develop the gas fields with Kosmos, with Petrosen and SMH coming in as working interest partners. Together, the two combined fields – now referred to as the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim Field - contain estimated proven reserves of 15 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas with current technology. That number is likely to grow in the coming years as additional drilling takes place and technology advances.