Offshore oil miss fails to dent Gambian optimism

The West African country’s most recent effort to find offshore oil came up short, but explorers hope to drill more wells in 2019

The first offshore well drilled in The Gambia in four decades found more water than oil and has been abandoned. But both the drillers and the Gambian government remain optimistic that the block's proximity to big oil finds off central Senegal means it could yet prove oil-rich. Australian independent Far drilled the Samo-1 well in the A2 permit area in partnership with Malaysia's Petronas, touting a prospective resource of 825mn barrels in the area. But Far said in November that wireline logging data indicated the main target horizons in the well, which was drilled to a total depth of 3,240m, were water-bearing. The government has extended Far's current licence to June 2019 to allow for furth