Invictus Energy dangles fresh deals before shipping oil rig
INVICTUS Energy this week dangled fresh deals to prop up Zimbabwean enterprises, as it scaled up exploration efforts in Muzarabani, about 300km northeast of Harare.
The deals will see Canada-based Polaris Natural Resources Inc, which will be providing technical services to Invictus, procuring 85% of its requirements from Zimbabwean suppliers.
About 85% of its workforce would be drawn from the Zambezi basin, where Invictus hopes to strike potentially lucrative oil or gas finds and transform the vast region and the southern African country.
This would add to the signing of a Production Sharing Agreement with the government, which will tie both parties to transparency and fairness from the day the first drop shoots out of the wells.
The agreement provides a concession of exploration, development and production of rights to an investor, who in turn would reimburse the resource owner with a stated percentage of the produced resources.
In a market update released on Wednesday, Invictus managing director Scott Macmillan said the project was on track and almost one hundred Zimbabweans would be drafted into the workforce as exploration intensifies.
“The company continues to engage and meet with our stakeholders and we remain committed to hiring local and national experts, and to procuring products and services in the region and throughout Zimbabwe,” Macmillan said.
“In keeping with the company’s strong commitment to community employment, Polaris’s corporate goals are to implement an 85% local content policy on all of its operations regarding employment, supplies and consumables. The campaign will involve the training and deployment of approximately 80 local field crew for the seismic acquisition programme,” he said.
Polaris will provide acquisition services for Invictus’ first two-dimension (2D) seismic programme.
This is an advanced search method that will use sound to define where test wells should be located at the heart of a 2 000 hectare oilfield.
“Our exploration programme is on track, and the significant amount of preparatory work that we have undertaken is paying off. We are using a very experienced contractor and have put in place a very experienced team to run the programme. The seismic programme will enable us to refine the Mzarabani-1 target defined from the existing seismic dataset and help us fill our prospect inventory ahead of our basin opening drilling campaign. We are very excited to get our exploration programme underway,” he said.
Polaris has conducted over 1 000 seismic projects since 1996.
Invictus has said it would drill its first test well around September, and Polaris’ work would be key in establishing the exact site for the shaft.
“Polaris has conducted over 15 projects in East Africa and has been well accepted in all communities where they have operated,” Invictus said.
Invictus intends to conduct, process and interpret a minimum of 400 line km of 2D seismic exploration in order to refine the Mzarabani-1 drilling location and well path. — Staff Writer