African Petroleum in its update has announced that it is still seeking strategic partners on its 10 licences in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, so as to share risk and potential reward of the company’s exploration program as well as fund its high impact exploration drilling campaign in 2016 and beyond, Petroleum Africa.

The company stated that its immediate focus is to conclude the transaction in Côte d’Ivoire, and to also farm out its assets in Gambia and Senegal as talks are ongoing. Management of the company is hopeful that agreements will be concluded in due course.

In Cote d’Ivoire African Petroleum signed a joint bidding agreement with a London-listed oil and gas company to provide a framework for the incoming third party to secure a 45% operated interest in a PSC, covering Block CI-513. It is anticipated that African Petroleum will hold a non-operated interest of 45%, with the remaining 10% carried interest held by Petroci.

In the meantime, third party activity is still ongoing in the region with the Vitol led group which is expected to commence exploration drilling during Q4 of 2015 in their Block CI-508 license, which is next to African Petroleum’s CI-509 and CI-513 licenses.

However, African Petroleum is in advanced farm-out discussions with several interested parties across the company’s assets in Gambia and Senegal. A number of companies have confirmed their interest in pursuing a transaction and have initiated detailed due diligence. The Company is looking to attract binding offers as soon as possible.

As a matter of fact, the company is confident that despite challenges in the industry caused by the decline in the prices of oil, the attractiveness of the company’s assets is enough to allow for a successful conclusion to ongoing farm-out discussions. It is expected that the company will be in a position to announce further progress on these discussions by the end of 2015.