The Director General of the Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone, Foday B. L. Mansaray, pleaded with investors to maximize the country's upstream potential during the "Invest in African Energy" reception in London. The meeting, which was organized by the African Energy Chamber, provided a platform for the continent’s nascent leaders to interact with investors in the sector.
The London reception came at a time when the West African nation of Sierra Leone launched its fifth petroleum licensing round in May 2022 to bring in new investors to explore and develop its frontier acreage.
The country seeks to advance in its nascent oil and gas sector, offering potential investors over 63,000 square kilometers of what has been described as "highly prospective acreage," in which the Directorate has invested investors to engage through "block and technical data acquisition," according to the Director General.
"Sierra Leone is home to a working petroleum system that was supported by small-scale oil and gas discoveries, including the Venus-B1, Mercury-1, and Jupiter-1 wells by Anadarko and the Savannah-1X well by Lukoil," the African Energy Chamber confirmed.
"Sierra Leone’s Petroleum Directorate operates under the mandate to unlock the full potential of its national hydrocarbon resources, regulating the exploration and production of affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy across Sierra Leone." "We offer access to acreage, competitive fiscal conditions, a transparent and stable government, high-quality data with reprocessing, and world-class conjugate discoveries," Mansaray told investors at the London reception.
The Director General assured the gathering that, "the response from investors to our fifth licensing round, has been excellent and is part of the reason we extended the deadline. We like to think of IOCs as partners, not investors. We try to integrate into their operations. We have tried to eliminate the red tape. It currently takes 85 days from application to licensing."
Sierra Leone Petroleum Directorate and Angola National Agency for Oil, Gas, and Biofuels signed a historic cooperation agreement at the Angola Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in 2022 in Luanda. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed to establish a shared commitment to promoting and intensifying collaboration across the oil and gas sector.
The MoU release said serves to outline opportunities for bilateral trade and investment, position oil and gas cooperation as mutually beneficial economically, technologically, socially, and environmentally for both countries, and reaffirm stronger economic, cultural, and social ties between Sierra Leone and Angola.
Angola is the largest oil producer on the continent and has been on a path of fostering pan-African energy diplomacy, executing diplomatic visits to and signing a series of cooperation agreements with new and existing hydrocarbon producers across the region that target policy alignment, knowledge sharing, and enhanced trade and investment across the energy and non-energy sectors.
The Director General of the Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone, Foday B. L. Mansaray
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