Energy Capital & Power (ECP) is pleased to announce that Foday Mansaray, Director General of Sierra Leone’s Petroleum Directorate (PDSL) under the President’s Office, will speak at the MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power Conference & Exhibition in Senegal from September 1 to 2.
Following H.E. Macky Sall, Senegalese President and African Union Chairperson’s address on the first morning, Mansaray will be joined by ministers from Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea-Conakry, as well as executives from Petrosen, Societe Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures, the Gambia National Oil Company, PetroGuin, Soc.
Sierra Leone announced the start of a large 56-block offshore licensing cycle at the end of last month, with the round set to expire on September 30, 2022. Despite the fact that no commercial hydrocarbon discoveries have yet been found in the country, foreign oil corporations are doing exploratory work. Exploration in Sierra Leon began in 1984, with Mobil and Amoco drilling a pair of wildcat wells.
The PDSL recently awarded 8 offshore licenses to Nigeria’s Innoson Oil and Gas, completing its fourth successful licensing cycle. International interest in Sierra Leone and the wider west African region has piqued as a result of recent discoveries along the Equatorial Atlantic Margin and non-commercial oil shows discovered by Anadarko and Russia’s Lukoil between 2009 and 2013 at Venus B-1, Mercury-1, Jupiter-1, and Savannah-1X.
The PDSL has been a hive of activity under Mansaray’s leadership since October 2020, granting Wildcat Petroleum non-exclusive rights to 20 offshore blocks for geological surveying early last month and celebrating Innoson’s announcement a week later of an estimated gas reserve of 8.2 trillion cubic feet (tcf) discovered in the country.
With the theme of MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2022 being “The Future of Gas: Growth Using Strategic Investment and Policymaking,” Mansaray’s address takes on added significance, with his country following closely behind regional leader Senegal, which has a 15 tcf transnational Greater Tortue Ahmeyim megadevelopment coming online next year and a further 20 tcf at Yakaar-Teranga awaiting final investment decision, and Mauritania, which has Sierra Leone’s latest licensing round, under the Medium-Term National Development Plan, will offer 63,643km2 of total offshore acreage split evenly across 56 equal blocks, and with investment delegations expected from Africa, Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and the Middle East, and $2.5 billion in deals signed at ECP’s events last year, MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2022, through Mansaray’s presence, offers Sierra Leone an ideal platform through which to push these deals forward
As a process engineer, Mansaray has unique and privileged insight into the industry, having worked on projects ranging from offshore South America to the west African coast to the continent’s deserts in the north.
Working on multibillion-dollar projects like Schlumberger and TotalEnergies, Expro and TechnipFMC, his expertise is in the integrated development of greenfield projects, ensuring that they are both ecologically and economically feasible.
“Mr. Mansaray is a forward-looking energy leader for the nation of Sierra Leone, whose standout works in public-private partnerships, foreign investment promotion, and gas valorization have led his country into a new era of promising exploration at the forefront of the MSGBC gas rush,” Sandra Jeque, ECP’s International Conference Director, says.
His participation and thoughts at the MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2022 ministerial and NOC panels will be a benefit for all delegates and a compass by which the nations in the west African basin may orient their investment strategy and policies.”