Anadarko Expects More Africa Offshore Finds After Ghana Success

By Emily Bowers

(Bloomberg) — Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the U.S. natural gas producer with a share in Ghana’s Jubilee project, expects to make more finds off Africa’s coast.

“We have Ghana, which is going to be an established producing area,” said Frank Patterson, vice president of international exploration. “We have Sierra Leone and Liberia and Mozambique and Kenya as frontier in Africa that we see the indications, geologically, that we like.”

Anadarko made a gas discovery last month off the coast of Mozambique and in September discovered crude off the coast of Sierra Leone. The Woodlands, Texas-based company will collect seismic data on two blocks in offshore Ivory Coast this year, Patterson said.

Tweneboa, a Ghana offshore find outside Jubilee, “could be the next potential major project,” Patterson said in an interview in Accra today.

Interest in Ghana’s oil industry is growing ahead of production at the Jubilee oil field, set to begin in the fourth quarter of this year. More investment may help to lower costs in the country, Patterson said.

“The more the operators come in, the infrastructure’s going to grow,” he said.

Drilling wells off Ghana’s coast costs between $30 and $40 million each, cheaper than other regions where Anadarko operates thanks to milder weather and shallower water depths, Patterson said.

“This play is really unique and because of that, you can control the costs a little better than in some other plays,” he said.

–Editors: Will Kennedy, Amanda Jordan.