South Africa: Tower Resources Provides Updated Resource Estimates from Algoa-Gamtoos license

Tower Resources plc has announced that its subsidiary Rift Petroleum Ltd  has received updated resource estimates from its 50% partner and license Operator, New Age Energy Algoa (Pty) Ltd (New Age), following NewAge’s interpretation of the reprocessing of additional 2D seismic data covering the Algoa-Gamtoos license, offshore South Africa.

The reprocessing work encompassed 4,500 line kms of 2D seismic data incorporating both data already owned by the partners and also further data acquired from the Petroleum Authority of South Africa (PASA) including tie lines from Brulpadda to the Algoa-Gamtoos area, together with two post-stack merged 3D seismic surveys in the Algoa Basin. The work was undertaken by PGS and the focus was on creating a time and phase matched dataset covering the Gamtoos Basin and the Deepwater (Outeniqua basin) section of the license area.

The resulting seismic dataset shows an overall improvement in bandwidth, de-noise and imaging. Structural imaging is substantially sharper than in the previous vintage dataset, gathers are significantly flatter with less noise, and the Operator places greater confidence in the Amplitude Versus Offset ( AVO) analysis.

The impact on what can be seen in the Deepwater (Outeniqua basin) section of the license is especially pronounced, allowing the Operator to identify a deeper level slope (as seen at Brulpadda) and three separate reservoir targets:

·    A shallow section which was previously identified by the Operator, whose size is now estimated to be slightly larger, to which the Operator ascribes 470 million boe Pmean recoverable resources (unrisked);

·    A deeper slope section which was not previously identified by the Operator, to which the Operator ascribes 231 million boe Pmean recoverable resources (unrisked);

·    A basin floor fan section which was not previously identified by the Operator, to which the Operator ascribes 710 million boe Pmean recoverable resources (unrisked);

In addition, the Operator has been able to identify a new substantial lead in a submarine fan complex in the shallow-water Gamtoos area of the license, which it estimates to contain 135 million boe Pmean recoverable resources (unrisked); and has updated its estimates of the recoverable resources in the other leads it has already identified, some of which now appear larger and others smaller. Overall, the Operator has increased the portfolio volumes by 54% as a result of reprocessing seismic data and reinterpretation.

The Operator’s most recent estimates of the in-place and recoverable resources, prepared in accordance with the SPE-PRMS classification standard, are set out in detail in the tables below:

As previously noted, the Algoa-Gamtoos license is located adjacent to Total’s Blocks 11B/12B, where Total has made discoveries in excess of 1 billion boe at Brulpadda and Luiperd, in the Outeniqua basin that runs across those blocks. The Algoa-Gamtoos license also contains the southern deep-water basin margin of the Outeniqua Basin and is approximately 150 kms along strike to the East of Total’s Brulpadda and Luiperd-1X wells.

The Luiperd-1X well encountered 73 meters of good quality net pay in 85 meters of gross sands in the main target interval and, according to Africa Energy which owns 49% of Main Street 1549 Proprietary Ltd (one of Total’s partners in the well) the well reached a maximum constrained flow-rate through a 58/64″ choke of 33 million cubic feet per day of natural gas (‘MMcfpd’) and 4,320 barrels of condensate per day (‘bcpd’), an aggregate of approximately 9,820 barrels of oil equivalent per day (‘boepd’). The choke configuration could not be increased due to surface equipment limitations. The absolute open flow (‘AOF’) potential of the well is expected to be significantly higher than the restricted test rates. Current indications are that the Luiperd discovery is larger than the 1 billion boe Brulpadda discovery announced in 2019.

The Company plans to update its website section on South Africa over the coming days and will make a brief announcement when this updated section has been uploaded.