Delivering a presentation titled Strategic Opportunities in Deepwater Exploration: Where the Giant Plays Await Offshore Senegal, Rodriguez highlighted the commercial potential for deepwater exploration, highlighting frontier opportunities in Senegal.  

 “Can we drill in deep water? The answer is yes. Senegal is ready. By 2030, oil companies will have the technical capacity to drill up to 4,000 m in the basin,” she stated.

While technically complex, deepwater exploration has yielded strong results in other markets across the continent, most notably Namibia. According to Rodriguez, “People used to say deepwater is not commercial, but now we have the Orange Basin as an example that yes, it is possible.”

With over 15 billion barrels discovered there, Rodriguez noted shared characteristics between the Orange basin in southern Africa and the MSGBC basin, including contourites, mass-transport complexes, basin floor fans and widespread pockmarks and oil seeps.

“The MSGBC Basin holds similar frontier advantages, with promising evidence of source rock development,” Rodriguez said, pointing to Aptian source rock in Senegal and the deep, gas-generative system confirmed by Yakaar-Teranga. Rodriguez also referenced SLB’s 3D mapping showing Cretaceous sands extending into open areas, supported by DSDP data and Petrosen studies.

The MSGBC basin, according to Rodriguez, offers “low-risk, high-reward exploration.” This is largely due to thick sedimentary sections exceeding 2,500 m Jurassic to Albian source rocks, higher geothermal gradients, long-distance reservoir transport and large counter-regional trap geometries - combined with new enablers such as fast-track seismic, ultra-far angles, FWI and modern deepwater drilling technologies.

As such, there lies significant potential for commercial success across the region’s deepwater acreage.