Zimbabwe has over 5.5 billion barrels of oil resource

Oil and gas explorer Invictus Energy (IVZ) has bolstered the potential prospective resource of its Cabora Bassa project in Zimbabwe to over 5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

The company today said an independent technical report from ERCE estimated a prospective resource of 1.2 billion boe for five "drill-ready" prospects in the project area: the Baobab, Acacia, Marula, Mukamba and Mimosa prospects.

This builds on the major resource upgrade for the Mukuyu prospect announced in July this year.

Based on its 80-per-cent share in the Cabora Bassa project, Invictus' net share of the Basin Margin area resource equates to 937 million boe and 4.4 billion boe for the whole project area.

The company said the "substantial" resource potential in the Basin Margin play placed it at a comparable scale to the East African Rift System that resulted in oil and gas discoveries across the "String of Pearls" plays in Kenya and Uganda.

"The material prospective resource estimate for the five drill-ready Basin Margin prospects confirms the high potential and quality of our acreage and prospect and lead inventory," Invictus Managing Director Scott Macmillan said.

"Invictus has built and matured a high-quality and material portfolio of prospects and leads from a conceptual play initially identified on sparse vintage data to multiple drill-ready prospects with 1.2 billion barrels of potential."

The company said its plans to test the Basin Margin play would begin with the Baobab-1 well, which it believed showed similar characteristics to the "play-opening" discoveries in the Lokichar Basin in Kenya and the Albertine Graben in Uganda.

Invictus has already kicked off the construction of the Baobab-1 well pad and plans to move its drill rig to the area immediately following the completion of the Mukuyu-1 well, which spudded on September 23.