JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – An updated independent assessment of the prospective resources of dual-listed Camac Energy’s offshore Nigerian leases has increased the estimated recoverable resources from 537-million barrels of oil to 2.37-billion barrels of oil in four of its top exploration prospects.

Moreover, the assessment estimated recoverable gas resources of 2.9-trillion cubic feet in offshore oil mining leases 120 and 121.

Camac said on Monday that drilling locations had been identified on each of the four prospects and technical work was continuing to allow for the first exploration well to be drilled in the first half of 2015.

The wells would target the miocene formation, which had been successfully demonstrated to be a prolific oil-producing layer in deep-water Nigeria.

The drilling programme would be carried out using either the drillship Energy Searcher, which was currently under contract drilling the Oyo-7 and Oyo-8 development wells, or a second rig would be contracted.

“The programme will be funded with future cash flows from the Oyo-7 and Oyo-8 development wells, cash on hand and available credit facilities,” noted the group.

Chairperson and CEO Kase Lawal said the increase in resources on the prospects and what that represented in term of the potential of Camac’s deep-water Nigerian assets was “monumental”.

“These results have been achieved through a combination of both the focused efforts of the skilled geoscientists on our team – who bring [with them] tremendous local knowledge of the basin and have played key roles in the discovery of other giant fields, as well as the application of superior techniques that have led to successful discoveries in the Nigerian deep-water by other operators.

“The team has spent considerable time developing the regional framework, using the latest in geoscience and enhanced quantitative interpretation techniques to define these four high-impact prospects.

“This is a near fivefold increase [compared with] our previous assessment of these prospects,” Lawal highlighted.