ARA Petroleum, part of the Zubair Corporation based in the Sultanate of Oman in the Arabian peninsula, has been granted a 25-year development licence for the Ntorya gas discovery area onshore the far south of Tanzania.
The licence was awarded to the operator of the existing Ruvuma joint venture, ARA Petroleum Tanzania Limited (APT), a wholly owned subsidiary of ARA Petroleum.
APT took over operatorship of the onshore Ruvuma JV in 2020 and now owns a 75 percent working interest.
The Ntorya gas field lies within the Tanzanian onshore Ruvuma JV licence area and is adjacent to a region containing the world-class offshore natural gas resources with the same name in the Rovuma Basin underpinning LNG projects in Mozambique waters to the south.
ARA Petroleum is based in Muscat, Oman, and has affiliated offices in London, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Trondheim in Norway.
Onshore resources
The award of the development licence allows ARA Petroleum’s APT unit to proceed with Tanzania’s largest onshore gas development with the goal of producing gas for the growing domestic market in the next year.
“We are delighted to receive this licence from the Ministry of Energy and thank all the Tanzanian agencies involved,” said Erhan Saygi, General Manager of APT.
“We are ready to launch work immediately to bring this onshore development project into production,” he stated.
APT explained that it had prepared a field development plan that includes, but is not limited to, converting an existing well into a producing well, building in-field gas processing facilities and contracting a rig operator to drill a third well to appraise the field further.
APT expects to produce 40 million standard cubic feet a day in the first year of production and to increase that to 140 million standard cubic feet a day within a few years, according to a gas sales agreement signed with the Tanzanian Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) earlier in 2024.
Such volumes would increase significantly current Tanzanian gas production.
Additionally, APT believes the potential for gas production from the field is far larger having commissioned, acquired and interpretated 338 square kilometres of 3D seismic data over the Ruvuma JV licence area.
Gas potential
Following the interpretation of the seismic data, APT said it considered the area to yield a matured unaudited Contingent Resource estimate of 3.45 trillion cubic feet of Gas Initially In Place (GIIP), with an mean unrisked GIIP potential of 16.4 Tcf and a risked mean potential of 6.9 Tcf for the wider Ruvuma JV area.
“Acknowledging this wider potential, the development licence divides the original ‘Mtwara Exploration Licence’ area into nine blocks: five blocks containing the Ntorya discovery and four blocks labelled as ‘adjoining’ blocks,” the company explained.
The Ruvuma JV parties are required to undertake geological, geophysical and geochemical studies in the area and drill at least one additional exploration well within five years while spending a minimum of $10 million.
“We are excited about further exploration and appraisal work in this area as we consider it to hold truly enormous volumes of gas,” said APT’s Saygi.
“We believe the Ntorya gas field and wider area could be game-changing for Tanzania’s efforts to alleviate energy poverty, spur further economic development and potentially transform the country into a regional energy hub,” he added.
