Bemolanga

  1. Pages with broken file links
  2. Oil fields of Madagascar
  3. Bituminous sands


File:Madagascar-Bemolanga.png
22x20px Madagascar (Madagasikara)

Bemolanga is the name of a large tar sands deposit in the onshore Morondava Basin of Madagascar discovered in the early 1900s but known to locals for centuries. The field is located north of the Tsimiroro heavy oil field and east of the town of Morafenobe (it is located at 17°47'19"S, 45°07'15"E).

Madagascar Oil, founded by Sam Malin, is current license holder of the Bemolanga field. It describes the field as being a giant bitumen field of 8-13ºAPI low sulphur (<1%) and low vanadium ultra heavy oil. It gives the oil resources as:



Oil Volumes billion barrels P-50 2P+3P
Oil in place 16.6 n/a
Recoverable reserves n/a 9.8
[1]


The field is at 0-30 m (0-100 ft) depth and about 120 km (75 mi) from the coast.

Thirteen wells and over 500 core-holes were drilled from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The hydrocarbons are found in the Isalo and Amboloando formations over an area of approximately 400 km² (150 sq mi). The prospective surface mining area is defined by wherever there is less than 40 m (130 ft) depth to top tarsand. The average overburden thickness in the surface mining area is around 15 m (50 ft) (considerably less than average overburden thickness in Canada) and oil saturation is up to 12%.

The source rocks for the Bemolanga oil is believed to be the Karoo formation of the Middle Sakamena Shale. The field was lifted to its present near surface location due to the renewed uplifting and seaward tilting of the island of Madagascar during the Tertiary period.

After discussions that began in 2004, Total farmed in to Bemolanga, in September 2008, acquiring a 60 percent interest and operatorship and agreeing a 2 year program to drill 130 additional core wells at a cost of $200 million. Total began its own field work in mid 2009, with the start-up of commercial production planned for 2018. If development of the field is successful, it is expected that 2.5 billion barrels of recoverable resources will be developed to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day for more than 30 years.

The Bemolanga field gives it name to the homonymous song by the Malagasy group, Mahaleo.

Notes

  1. ↑ Data in this table are as per DeGolyer and MacNaughton

References

External links

mg:Bemolanga


...