(Ecofin Agency) - Cairn Energy Plc, a British oil and gas company, has registered the drilling of an exploratory well on the rich offshore Bellatrix prospect as part of its assessment and exploration program on the offshore Senegal potential.

The Bellatrix well will be the third well in a sound evaluation program of three years for which the joint-venture partners was been granted approval by the Senegalese authorities, we learn from FAR Ltd, a company listed on ASX.

The program will start at the beginning on the fourth quarter 2015 with the drillship Ocean Rig Athena from the company ConocoPhillips. The drilling of the three wells will be completed around mid-2016.

Bellatrix is among the high quality prospects identified on the Rufisque and Sangomar licences in the offshore Senegal. It is meant to hold, based on cartographic studies, 168 million barrels of oil calculated on the basis of prospective non risk-adjusted crude resources.

The well to be drilled will help in “defining the northern limit of the SNE field and determining the features of the oil reservoir”, explained Richard Heaton, exploration director at Cairn Energy. The other two wells will assess the potential of the SNE field and will be used to demonstrate the threshold of the economic aspect of the field which was announced as holding about 200 million oil barrels.

FAR holds 15% shares in the Sangomar Deep, Sangomar Offshore and Rufisque offshore blocks covering a total area of 7,490 km2 in Senegal, against 40% for Cairn Energy Plc, 35% for ConocoPhillips and 10% for the national company Petrosen.