FAR and its Senegal joint-venture partners Cairn Energy, ConocoPhillips and Petrosen are looking to book more resources to create a hub development in the SNE (SEN, 32/11) Field off Senegal.

The consortium has taken the Ocean Rig Athena drillship for a drilling programme in the coming weeks.

The drillship is currently in Angola and FAR expects it will shortly begin mobilisation to Senegal.

The firm drilling programme covers three wells including two appraisal wells on the SNE-1 oil discovery that will include a coring and testing programme, plus one shelf exploration well.

This drilling, logging, coring and testing programme is expected to be completed by mid-2016.

The first two wells (SNE-2 and SNE-3) will be drilled to appraise the SNE Field and are aimed at progressing towards proving the threshold economic field size, which FAR estimates is in the order of 200 MMbbl for a foundation project.

The third well (BEL-1) in the drilling programme will be the first exploration well to be drilled in the blocks following the discoveries in the FAN-1 and SNE-1 wells.

This well will be aimed at building the resource base within tieback range of a possible future hub development over the SNE Field.

It will be drilled into the Bellatrix prospect which has been mapped by FAR to contain 168 MMbbl of oil on a gross, unrisked, prospective resource basis with 25 MMbbl net to FAR.

The Senegal JV comprises FAR (15%), Cairn Energy (operator) 40%, ConocoPhillips (35%) and Petrosen (10%).