Recent Activities in the Continued Development of the Giant Ibhubesi Gas Field Orange River Basin, R.S.A.

The Partnership led by Forest Oil as operators in offshore blocks 1, 2a, and 2c (Fig. 1) in the area of the Orange River Basin finished a drilling campaign in 2001 having drilled 4 exploration wells resulting in the discovery of what has been designated as the Ibhubesi Field. By various estimates the field reserves are just less than 1 Tcf of gas, and occur in 3 different seismic anomalies that form separate stratigraphic traps (Figs. 2a and 2b).