Bemolanga is a large
oil sands
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...
deposit in the
onshore Morondava Basin
Morondava Basin is one of the major sedimentary basins of Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island c ...
of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. The deposit was discovered in the early 1900s but was known to locals for centuries. The field is located north of the
Tsimiroro
Tsimiroro is a large oil field in the onshore Morondava Basin of Madagascar found south of the Bemolanga ultra heavy oil field and south of the town of Morafenobe. It is estimated to contain as many as of heavy oil with 14° to 16° API gra ...
heavy oil field and east of the town of
Morafenobe
Morafenobe is a town and commune ( mg, kaominina) in western Madagascar. It belongs to the district of Morafenobe, which is a part of Melaky Region.
Morafenobe is served by a local airport. Primary and junior level secondary education are avai ...
. The field is at depth and about from the coast.
Madagascar Oil
Madagascar Oil SA is an oil company operating in Madagascar. It is the principal onshore oil company in Madagascar in terms of oil resources and land.
Madagascar Oil's operational office is in Antananarivo, Madagascar and its administrative off ...
is a license holder of the Bemolanga field with 40% stake belonging to
Total S.A.
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...
Madagascar Oil describes the field as being a giant bitumen field of 8-13
ºAPI low
sulphur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
(<1%) and low
vanadium
Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer ( pas ...
ultra heavy oil
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...
. According to
DeGolyer and MacNaughton
DeGolyer and MacNaughton is a petroleum consulting company based in Dallas, Texas, with offices in Houston, Moscow, Astana, Buenos Aires, and Algiers.
DeGolyer and MacNaughton was founded in 1936 by Everette Lee DeGolyer and Lewis MacNaughton.
...
, the field has of
oil in place
Oil in place (OIP) (not to be confused with original oil-in-place (OOIP)) is a specialist term in petroleum geology that refers to the total oil content of an oil reservoir. As this quantity cannot be measured directly, it has to be estimated fr ...
(P-50) and of recoverable oil (2P+3P). In July 2018, Grynberg Petroleum, a US based company, started considering the acquiring of some interest in the Bemolanga field.
The
source rock
In petroleum geology, source rock is rock which has generated hydrocarbons or which could generate hydrocarbons. Source rocks are one of the necessary elements of a working petroleum system. They are organic-rich sediments that may have been depos ...
s 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, which started in Late
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
(
Turonian
The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded by t ...
) and continued throughout the
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...
era.
Thirteen
wells
Wells most commonly refers to:
* Wells, Somerset, a cathedral city in Somerset, England
* Well, an excavation or structure created in the ground
* Wells (name)
Wells may also refer to:
Places Canada
*Wells, British Columbia
England
* 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 . The prospective surface mining area is defined by wherever there is less than depth to top oil sand. The average
overburden
In mining, overburden (also called waste or spoil) is the material that lies above an area that lends itself to economical exploitation, such as the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. Overburden is distinct from tai ...
thickness in the
surface mining
Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which ...
area is around (considerably less than average overburden thickness in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
) and oil saturation is up to 12%.
In September 2008, Total S.A. acquired a 60% interest and operatorship of Bemolanga. It agreed a 2-year program to drill 130 additional core wells at a cost of US$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 of recoverable resources will be developed to produce of oil for more than 30 years.
The Bemolanga field gives its name to the homonymous song by the Malagasy group,
Mahaleo
Mahaleo is a folk-pop band from Madagascar that is widely viewed as the most popular Malagasy group of all time. The band was founded by Dama (Rasolofondraosolo Zafimahaleo) with six of his classmates after first performing together during the ...
.
References
Madagascar Oil websiteBemolanga brochureHeavy Oil InfoRigzoneGrafton Resources{dead link, date=May 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
External links
DeGolyer & MacNaughton (petroleum consultants)Grafton Resources website
Oil fields of Madagascar
Bituminous sands