Côte d’Ivoire is perhaps best known for cocoa beans, but the West African country’s top energy and finance officials are hoping more oil and gas companies will join them in a search for “elephants” in deep and ultradeep water offshore.

These so-called elephants, or rather massive oil and gas discoveries, are no strangers to Côte d’Ivoire and nearby countries. Total’s Saphir-1XB struck oil earlier this year in an abrupt margin play in the frontier San Pedro Basin, encountering 40 m (131 ft) of net oil play in a series of 350 m (1,148 ft) of reservoirs after drilling 4,655 m (15,272 ft) belowground. In addition, some of the submarine fan systems offshore Côte d’Ivoire are said to be analogous to the Jubilee play type along the West African Transform Margin in Ghana.

With this pointing to the region’s potential and a revised legal framework to make itself more attractive to potential investors, the country is making available to the oil and gas industry seven offshore blocks. The blocks have water depths that range from about 3,000 m (9,843 ft) to 4,000 m (13,123 ft). Seismic data points to leads on just about all of the blocks.

Officials touted the ultradeep water opportunities during a stop in Houston on Oct. 14.

“We have made a lot of discoveries but we think a lot of work is still needed to be done,” said Daniel Gnangni, director general of state-owned Petroci Holding, after noting that the country’s sedimentary basins covers about 87,000 sq km (33,591 sq miles), but about 70% of this area is unexplored. “We have drilled 241 wells. In a basin like this we should drill at least two, three or four times more wells to have an exhaustive exploration of our basin. … We are looking for elephants.”

Patrick Coole, a geoscientist for PGS, described discoveries that have been made in Côte d’Ivoire since the 1990s. However, he singled out the Saphir find, saying it is one of the main discoveries that changed preconceptions about the Côte d’Ivoire margin. In the past, exploration had been focused to the eastern side, but Saphir pushed the concept of the petroleum system farther west and farther offshore. In addition, the find answered some lingering questions, such as about rock maturity and geothermal gradient, he said.

“In terms of considering your risk in a basin such as this where we are not constrained by things such as large salt movement or big shale diapirism,” Coole said after noting the firm basically sees two petroleum systems. “It’s kind of obvious on the side of data, which is a real blessing for interpreting some of these data sets. We can really prove some great play concepts and really quite quickly.”

Côte d’Ivoire’s sedimentary basin, which stretches along Africa’s west coast from Liberia to Ghana, was “initiated from Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous with the opening of an intra cratonic rift of probable panafrican age,” and “controlled by the Saint Paul and Romanche faults, with the typical diamond-shape of ‘mega pull-apart’ basins,” according to information presented during the event.

A myriad of PGS seismic data—which includes 2-D conventional, geostreamer, reprocessed 2-D and new 3-D datasets—point to several leads in the blocks being offered.

Covering 6,415 sq km (2,477 sq miles), Block C1-600 includes leads within Early to Late Cretaceous and lower Tertiary sediments, including channelized submarine fan systems analogous to Jubilee, based on information from PGS. “Oil and gas prone source rock potential is known from several Cretaceous intervals and include marine shales and limestones as well as lacustrine shales which accumulated during Aptian-Albian rifting.”

The same was said of Block C1-101, which spans 3,852 sq km (1,487 sq miles); and Block CI-602, which covers about 3,874 sq km (1,496 sq miles).

Leads identified in Block CI-603, covering about 5,543 sq km (2,140 sq miles), include Early Cretaceous (Albian) fault blocks which resemble shelf discoveries to the north of the block, including Saphir-1X. Similarly, leads were denoted in Block CI-604, which spans an area of about 6,547 sq km (2,528 sq miles), and Block CI-605, which covers about 6,472 sq km (2,499 sq miles). Data were scarce, however, for the 2,985-sq-km (1,153-sq-mile) Block CI-543.

“Much exploration work has been conducted since the ‘50s. Today with four production fields, our sedimentary basins produce about 20,000 barrels a day of crude oil and about 250 million cubic feet per day of natural gas,” said Adama Toungara, minister of petroleum and geology for Côte d’Ivoire.However, the vision has not been fully explored.”

The bidding round comes as the country aims to increase production from about 60,000 boe/d in 2014 to at least 200,000 boe/d by 2020 and become an energy hub.

To achieve these objectives, the government has taken several steps. These, as Toungara explained, include improving the contractual framework for production-sharing contracts (PSC) to take into account some of the risks associated with fluctuating oil prices and extending the contract length to nine years for ultradeep water. Changes also included amending the republic’s petroleum code and improving the governance of the hydrocarbon sector through more effective monitoring of contractual obligations.

“These actions led to intense oil exploration activities with the realization of several oil exploration wells and seismic surveys. Over the period from October [2011] to October 2014, 18 exploration wells were completed with encouraging results,” Toungara said. “There have been four promising discoveries since 2011. These intense petroleum exploration activities represent an investment of nearly $2 billion between the period [2011] to now.”

In all, Côte d’Ivoire has 61 blocks, including seven onshore, 47 offshore and the additional seven blocks up for bid, said Ibrahima Diaby, director general of hydrocarbons. He described how oil and gas activity stalled, with only three blocks being negotiated and awarded between 2001 and 2007. It wasn’t until after the end of a civil war that resulted in a force majeure and after a presidential election standoff was sorted out that activity began to pick up.

Since December 2011, 19 PSCs have been negotiated and signed, said Diaby, who pointed out some of the country’s major discoveries since then. These include Lukoil’s Independence hitting oil in Block CI-401 offshore in December 2011; Tullow Oil and Anadarko’s Paon-1X oil find in Block CI-103 in June 2012; Total’s Ivoire-1X encountering oil pay in Block CI-100 in April 2013 and Lukoil’s Capitaine East striking oil at Block CI-101 in April 2014.

“In the short term we can see with our partners that momentum is continuing, and from August to December, four wells have been drilled and as I speak one is being drilled and 10 more are planned for next year and 2016,” Diaby said.

After highlighting the country’s improved overall economic conditions, Daniel Duncan, prime minister of economy, finance and budget, briefly touched on some concerns that may give some pause—Ebola and a territory dispute with neighboring Ghana.

“For the time being, there is no Ebola in Côte d’Ivoire and we hope that it will maintain its position,” he said after mentioning the country’s efforts to prevent the spread of the disease that has hit Liberia to its east.

He later added that the dispute between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire concerning its maritime borders will be resolved peacefully based on international law.

“American, Australian, British, Canadian, French [and] Russian companies have been operating in this [basin] for many years and in some cases are now increasing their investments,” Duncan said. “Those who are currently absent are welcomed to join us.”

Contact the editor, Velda Addison, at vaddison@hartenergy.com.