Monday, 4 May, 2026/Edition 109

Last week, I was in Houston visiting several oil and gas companies. Offshore-to-ultradeep water basins continue to yield major oil and gas fields. This week, we will look at some of these recent discoveries on the Atlantic Margin of West Africa, and we will look at even more deepwater discoveries next week.

P.S. This edition of Core Elements is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jonathan Evenick, a prominent petroleum geologist who passed away. I learned this sad news from his former BP colleagues.

Rasoul Sorkhabi

Editor, Core Elements

Offshore Discoveries of West Africa Atlantic Margin

Alexander Lukatskiy/Shutterstock.com

The equatorial-to-southern Atlantic margin of West Africa has witnessed remarkable oil and gas discoveries in recent years.

Let’s look at some of these discoveries offshore Ivory Coast, Ghana, Republic of the Congo, and Angola.

Offshore Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire)

In February, Italian major Eni discovered a major field offshore Côte d'Ivoire. Eni has been active in this country since 2015.

The discovery well Murene South-1X is the first exploration well in Block CI-501.
Block CI-501 is operated by Eni (90 percent) in partnership with Petroci Holding (10 percent).
The Saipem Santorini drilling ship drilled the well to a total depth of roughly 5,000 meters at water depths of 2,200 meters.
The discovery, named the Calao South field, sits in the Calao channel complex.
The reservoir is Cenomanian-age sandstone.
Murene South-1X is located about eight kilometers southwest of Murene-1X drill in 2024 in the adjacent CI-205 block, where the Calao field was discovered.

Offshore Ghana

In July 2025, Eni and its partners Vitol Upstream Tano, Woodfields Upstream Ghana, and GNPC Explorco officially declared the discovery of the Eban-Akoma oil and gas fields offshore Ghana.

The fields are in the Tano Basin, within the Cape Three Points (OCTP) Block 4, where Eni has been a leading operator since 2009.
The find is estimated to hold between 500 and 700 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The Eban-Akoma discoveries are milestones in Ghana’s quest for energy and economic growth since the 2007 Jubilee field discovery by Tullow Oil.

The Akoma-1X well:

In 2019, Eni drilled the Akoma-1X well about 50 kilometers off Ghana’s coast.
The Maersk Voyager drilling ship drilled the well at a water depth of 350 meters and reached a total depth of 3,790 meters.
Akoma-1X hit a 20-meter-thick column of Cenomanian-age sandstone reservoir.
The field is estimated to contain 550–650 billion cubic feet of gas and 18–20 million barrels of condensate.
Eni is planning to drill Akoma-2 later this year.

The Eban–1X well:

In 2021, Eni drilled the Eban-1X well about 50 kilometers off the coast of Ghana.
The Saipem 10000 drilling ship drilled the well at a water depth of 545 meters and reached a total depth of 4,179 meters.
Eban-1X proved a single light oil column of about 80 meters in the Cenomanian-age sandstone reservoir.

Offshore Republic of the Congo

In April, TotalEnergies announced the discovery of the Moho G field.

The MHNM-6 NFW exploration drill encountered a 160-meter hydrocarbon column in an Albian-age mixed carbonate-siliciclastic reservoir.
These reservoirs often have good porosity and permeability when not heavily cemented.
Moho G, along with the earlier and nearby Moho F discovery, is estimated to contain nearly 100 million barrels of oil.
The Moho field lies 75 kilometers offshore Pointe-Noire and has seen remarkable production growth since the Moho Nord project began in 2017.
TotalEnergies EP Congo is the operator and major shareholder (63.5 percent) in the Moho license and is partnered with Trident Energy (21.5 percent) and the Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (15 percent).

Offshore Angola

In February 2026, Eni announced a major oil field discovery in Block 15/06 offshore Angola.

Block 15/06 is operated by Azule Energy (36.84 percent), in partnership with SSI Fifteen Ltd. (26.32 percent) and Sonangol E&P (36.84 percent). Azule Energy is a joint venture between Eni and BP.
The Algaita-01 discovery well, spudded on 10 January 2026, was drilled by the Saipem 12000 drill ship in a water depth of 667 meters.
The well encountered oil-bearing sandstones in multiple Upper Miocene intervals.

The Gajajeir-01 well:

The Algaita-01 well is the second major discovery for Azule Energy in Angola after its July 2025 Gajajeira-01 discovery.

Gajajeira-01 is located in Angola's Block 1/14 in the Lower Congo Basin.
The well was drilled at a water depth of 95 meters, approximately 60 kilometers off the coast.
The reservoir is of Lower Oligocene age, named LO100.
The field contains more than 1 trillion cubic feet of gas and 100 million barrels of associated condensate.

Go deeper: Learn more about some of these discoveries in Core Elements editions 94, 54, and 5.

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Jonathan Evenick Remembered

Photo source: Facebook

Jonathan C. Evenick died in 2023 at the untimely age of 44.

He earned his PhD in geology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville under the supervision of Professor Robert Hatcher.
His doctoral research was on subsurface structures and hydrocarbon reservoirs in the southern Appalachian Basin.
In 2008, he published Introduction to Well Logs & Subsurface Maps, which he later used to train students in petroleum geology.
He worked for BP in Houston for 13 years. In 2020, he moved to Tokyo to work for INPEX.
He received an AAPG award for delivering one of the top 10 oral presentations at the 2018 annual convention.
Evenick published more than 50 papers and conference presentations.

Recent papers: Evenick was the sole author of major papers on:

Source rock organofacies (2016)
Source rock thermal maturity (2021)
Global history of sedimentary basins (2021)
Hydrocarbon charge (2022)

Personal reflection: I always enjoyed discussing various issues of petroleum exploration and geology with Dr. Evenick. He will truly be missed.

Go deeper: Read this obituary.

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