Authorities in Sierra Leone’s Oil and Gas Industry have engaged Investors in the Licensing Office of the Oil and Gas Sector in the Continent.

The engagement between the country’s Oil and Gas Sector and Africa’s Oil and Gas Industry was to chat and brainstorm ideas and the procedures and processes involved in ensuring that the country is able to properly set-up its Oil and Gas industry up and running.

The Director of Petroleum in Sierra Leone, Foday B Mansaray implored the investors to take advantage of the country’s upstream potential during the Invest in Africa Energy Reception in London held on 26 January 2023, organized by the African Energy Chamber.

The Director General, during the Fifth Licensing Round in May last year, said the nation is pursuing progress in its oil and gas sector, offering over 63,000 kilometres of highly prospective acreage with which the petroleum director has invited the investors through the block and technical data acquisition.

Sierra Leone is home to a working petroleum system that was helped by small-scale oil and gas discoveries containing the venus-B, Mercury-1 and Jupiter-1 wells by Anadarko and Savannah-1X well by Lukoil.

Mansaray stated that Sierra Leone delivers access to Acreage Competitive Fiscal Situations, a transparent and steady government, high-quality data with reprocessing and world-class conjugate discoveries.

“The response from investors has been excellent and it’s part of the reason we extended the deadline. We want to think of IOCs as partners and not investors. We try to integrate into their operations. We have tried to eliminate the red tape. It currently takes 85 days to form an application into licensing,” Mansaray stated

He continued that the Sierra Leone Petroleum Directorate recently signed a cooperation agreement with the Angolan National Agency for Oil and Biofuel to establish a shared responsibility to facilitate and strengthen collaboration across the oil and gas sector in the country.

In May 2022, Sierra Leone launched its Fifth Petroleum Licensing Round, and the launching was done to attract new investors that can bring in development and explore the country’s frontier acreage.