On Monday afternoon, FAR executive chairman Michael Evans told the Excellence in Oil & Gas Conference in Sydney that the company's Senegal acreage includes one 3D-defined shelf-edge prospect with mean potential of about a billion barrels of oil.
In addition, several other targets have potential between 100 million and 200 million barrels, Evans said.
"If there is one thing I want to impress upon you today, it is the magnitude of the opportunity we have in West Africa," he said.
After almost two decades of concentrating on developing modest US oil and gas projects, FAR decided a few years ago that the market was not rewarding its efforts and it reassessed its strategy.
The company decided to become a deal-maker, not a deal-taker, and reduced its drilling commitments to concentrate on assessing and surveying prospects that could make a material difference to its market capitalisation (which now stands at $60 million).
In addition, FAR decided to aim for bigger "headline' prospects that would catch investors' attention.
It achieved this goal by taking on high-risk, high-reward acreage off West Africa.
In January 2006, FAR moved into deepwater permits off Senegal, not far south of the Mauritanian fields that made Hardman famous, taking a 30% stake in three blocks held by US major Hunt Oil.
This acreage has substantial turbidite sediment fan plays stretching down the slopes of the edge of the continental shelf. Some of these plays have stacked reservoirs, according to Evans.
Similar plays have delivered big finds in many other parts of the West African margin, and Senegal is underexplored by comparison with most parts of offshore West Africa, he said.
Hunt began by reprocessing old Shell data, which revealed many promising new prospects and leads. Then Hunt and FAR undertook an extensive 3D seismic program last year.
Now the partners have opened data rooms in the US and UK that they have opened to prospective farm-in partners.
They will need them as each well in these deepwater plays will cost about $US60 million. Expensive indeed, but as Evans says the "magnitude of the opportunity" is enormous.
Meanwhile, the company continues to work its much lower risk North American acreage, although here too it has concentrated on maximising the lift it can receive from these blocks, reducing drilling and investing heavily in seismic in order to identify larger targets.
And it is also doing some work in the Beibu Gulf off China in a joint venture with other Australian companies. The Roc Oil-led JV is developing an oil discovery and has six undeveloped oil accumulations holding a collective 60 million barrels.
First production from this project is expected in 2010 and should be about 15,000 barrels per day.
FAR has just 5% in this project, but Evans says the impact will be significant, although it pales beside the effect that success in Senegal would have.
