FAR yesterday said that data rooms had been opened in Dallas, Texas and in Woking, Britain to enable the review of technical information gathered so far by last year's extensive 3D seismic campaign over the Sangomar Shallow and Deep-Rufisque Shallow licences.

The Perth-based junior said further work by Hunt has derived reservoir parameters, which confirmed a range of probabilistic oil originally in place estimates for a very large shelf edge closure and multiple fan systems.

Processing of the seismic acquired over portions the Sangomar Shallow and Deep-Rufisque Shallow licences has highlighted multiple Santonian age fan systems, with stacked amplitude anomalies, as well as a very large Albian-to-Neocomian shelf edge closure (up to 178 square kilometres), and an adjacent Turonian source rock kitchen in the "oil window".

Particular focus had been drawn to analogous fields, including Mexico's Cantarell discovery, which that was recognised as a super-giant accumulation. In pre-rift time, Senegal was considered to be adjacent to Mexico before the African and American continents pulled apart.

FAR said processing of 2050 sq.km of seismic acquired during 2007 has confirmed that the Aptian shelf-edge prospect fell within the giant category, with mean potential exceeding a billion barrels (1128MMbbl) of oil in place.

Provided Hunt succeeded with the farm-out, FAR expects to be free-carried through one well, the timing of which would depend on rig availability and other operational parameters.

These licences covered an area of 14981 sq.km over the shelf, slope, and basin floor with multiple untested plays in a proven hydrocarbon system. They had giant hydrocarbon potential in the Senegalese portion of the productive Mauritania-Senegal-Guinea Bissau-Conaky Basin, FAR said.

The joint venture currently includes operator Senegal Hunt Oil Company (60%), FAR (30%) and Senegal state oil company Petrosen (10%).