The Albertine Rift

RSDD-H Image of the Albertine Rift showing the Buffalo and Giraffe wells situated within the anomalous regions generated by our imaging techniques

The interior rift basins of Africa have long been areas of interest to petroleum explorers. However, it is only recently that they, and in particular the well known oil seep terrains of the Albertine Graben in Uganda, have received serious exploration effort. Now, a series of recent large oil discoveries by Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil and Gas - and a very high exploration drilling success ratio - have turned the Albertine Graben into one of the world's "hottest" new petroleum provinces. The questions arising are firstly, how rich is this province and secondly, how extensive.

A trial RSDD-H survey of Tullow's Buffalo-Giraffe prospective trend has determined that RSDD-H is an effective exploration tool there. The Iso-Photo Density ("IPD") RSDD-H display (above) shows this discovery trend clearly as a series of black to hot orange, intense tonal anomalies set in low prospectivity green and yellow, surrounding non-anomalous terrains. River valleys (in white) display as negative interference zones on this display (cutting across boundaries of the prospective objects). In comprehensive RSDD-H surveys, such negative interference zones are mitigated by special processing / montaging of locally interfered landscape units to provide an integrated prospectivity interpretation across such heterogeneities (see by example, the Argentinian El Chivil example).

This RSDD-H trial survey, including the above display, suggests that the 300+mb Giraffe-Buffalo field (Tullow 2009) has one or two satellites awaiting discovery -such as to the west of the Giraffe well location. It also recognises excellent features to the south of this, in the Butiaba district, now being tested by Tullow and yielding exciting discoveries such as Kasamene and that there are more large discoveries yet to come elsewhere in the Albertine Graben. Scotforth now has an inventory of attractive RSDD-H leads in this basin and in other heavily under-explored savannah terrains of the East African Rifts.

So, in answer - firstly, the Albertine petroleum habitat appears rich, with multi-billion barrel potential, basin-wide, in its large inventory of discoveries and undrilled prospects and leads. Secondly, additional East African Rift Basins ("EARBs") display similar initial RSDD-H promise. A number of new, "frontier status", Initial Exploration Focus Areas ("IEFAs") have been identified and merit exploration licensing and technical progression - the EARB petroleum province may ultimately be much more extensive than just the Albertine Graben.