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WEST AFRICA
Deep in the jungle
Brief history of the country
Guinea, or Guinea-Conakry (the Republic of Guinea) is bordered by Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Mali (north), and Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte D’Ivoire (south). The Atlantic Ocean forms its western border.
Guinea lay on the edge of a series of African empires. The Ghana Empire, established in 300 AD northeast of Guinea, was replaced by the Sosso kingdom in the 12th century. Mandinka Muslims of the Mali Empire then ruled from 1235 until the 1500s when West Africa split into small kingdoms.
Fulani Muslims settled in central Guinea from 1735 and the Wassoulou Empire flourished from 1878 in upper Guinea. The French began to conquer the area in the 19th century culminating in the defeat of the Wassoulou in 1898.
France then negotiated boundaries with the UK and Portugal, forming the Territory of Guinea within French West Africa run from Dakar. In 1958, as the French Empire collapsed after World War 2, Guinea voted for independence.
The country became socialist and was governed by several autocratic rulers. Although free elections were held in 2010, political violence continues. In 2014 and 2015 the Ebola virus caused considerable hardship. Guinea's economy is largely dependent on agriculture and mineral production, especially bauxite.
Oil and gas summary
Guinea is a mountainous, forested country on the east and low-lying on the west near the coast. Its highlands are the source for the Niger, Gambia, and Senegal Rivers. The highest point is Mount Nimba at 1,752 m.
Geologically, Guinea is underlain by the Archaean West African craton with a partial cover of Proterozoic metasedments and volcanics. In the east green stone belts hold significant gold and iron ore reserves whilst weathering in the river valleys has led to the formation of large bauxite deposits. In the northwest the Paleozoic Bove Basin forms a thick sedimentary succession over the basement and extends offshore.
Although onshore seeps have been recognised, Guinea has limited potential for oil and gas. Some exploration is being conducted in the onshore coastal region of the Bove basin.
Offshore, Guinea’s first deep water well, Sabu-1 at 760 metres, was spudded in 2011. Deep water prospects could perhaps be analogues to discoveries in the Liberian Basin in neighbouring Sierra Leone and in Senegal to the north, within the passive margin basins created during and after opening of the Atlantic Ocean.
However, due to the high risk and lack of exploration drilling, it is currently forecast by Globalshift that no commercial oil or gas production will be achieved in Guinea in the short and medium term either offshore or onshore.
GUINEA
Map and National Flag
West Africa
Capital
Population
Land area (sq kms)
Oil prod (000s b/d)
Gas prod (bcm/yr)
Oil cons (000s b/d)
Gas cons (bcm/yr)
Conakry
10.3 mm
245,857
None
None
9.5
None
Government
Guinea’s President is directly elected for a 5-year term and is head of state and head of government, appointing a 25-member council of ministers.
The unicameral 114-member National Assembly is the elected legislative body. The President derives support from the Mandinka ethnic group, whilst the opposition is backed by the Fula ethnic group.
The National Office of Petroleum of Guinea (ONAP) oversees the industry under the auspices of The Ministry of Mines and Geology, which is responsible for petroleum exploration, development and production of oil and gas.
Geology and History of Exploration
Guinea is underlain by the Archaean West African craton. In the northwest this is covered by a Palaeozoic basin (the Bove Basin) which extends offshore where it is buried beneath Mesozoic and Cenozoic passive margin sediments associated with opening of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Bove basin - was deposited on the northwestern margin of Gondwana during the Palaeozoic. The Cambro-Ordovician was dominated by continental deposition followed by a marine transgression from Early Silurian to the Lower Devonian.
Some oil seeps have been reported in Guinea and there may be a source rock interval of Silurian shales corresponding to other areas in North Africa. The nearest wells where these have been drilled are in Senegal.
The Senegal Basin - lies offshore. Here the Mesozoic section represents the southern edge of this basin basin which began to form within a Permian to Triassic rift system during the breakup of North America, Africa and South America. It continued as a passive margin basin after opening of the ocean.
Globalshift believes there may be potential oil and gas accumulations in deep waters. Drilling in Senegal to the north has penetrated petroleum systems associated with Cretaceous basin floor fans and shelf edge to slope clastic deposits. Similar plays have been tested along the West Africa margin. Salt deformation in the deep basin could provide potential traps.
History - Guinea has no history of production. A few wells have been drilled onshore and offshore but all were dry and no oil or gas resources have been identified..
Onshore near the coast in the Bove basin oil seeps have been reported and the basin reaches a thickness of 4,000m but the wells drilled in the 1950s were too shallow to fully evaluate the potential. The basin remains high risk and no production is forecast.
In recent years companies have expressed interested in Guinea’s deeper offshore waters. Around 17,800 sq kms of 2D seismic and 7,635 sq kms of 3D seismic have been collected in surveys covering both shallow and deep waters. Hyperdynamics drilled the Sabu-1 exploration well in late 2011 in 730m of water. The well intersected its targeted Upper Cretaceous section but only encountered oil shows. The prospect was probably not an effective trap.
Further deep water drilling may be expected to test turbidite fan prospects similar to those first drilled in Senegal to the north in 2014.