Western Sahara

Northwest Africa

WESSEX - 50%

Mozambique Channel

Northwest Africa

In March 2006, Maghreb Exploration, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wessex, together with two other UK companies were awarded by the Government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) a production sharing contract over the onshore Bojador block covering 9,880,000 acres.

In early 2007, a transaction was agreed whereby Comet Petroleum, 100% holder of the offshore Guelta block, agreed to cross-assignment of interests with the Bojador block group.

Previously (early sixties) onshore and offshore drilling, as well as seismic, the Mesozoic Aaiun Basin has proven the occurrence of all the elements of a petroleum system.  The existence of good reservoir rocks, potential mature source rocks, and structure creating traps are relatively well documented, however, other elements such as hydrocarbon generation, migration timing and pathways, and actual entrapment, are still poorly defined.

An application has been successful in respect of the  offshore Imlili block located east of the Guelta block.  To give some scale of the licences held the size of the onshore Bojador block alone approximates the size of Wales.

Wessex hold 50% of the Imlili block and AIM listed Tower Resources hold the remaing 50%.

The intention of Wessex is to commence an initial technical evaluation of the blocks using the existing dataset, and then, subject to the United Nations settlement of the issue of sovereignty of the Western Sahara, to find a substantial farm-in partner to fully evaluate and explore the very large area of approximately 60,000 square kilometres.