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Invictus Energy, which is exploring for oil and gas in Muzarabani, has commenced ground-breaking and clearance at the seismic camp location ahead of the arrival of equipment and crew for the next stage of the its oil and gas discovery journey.

Through its Twitter handle, the company said once the camp has been constructed, it will begin training 80 local personnel for the field campaign.

A field campaign refers to the seismic data acquisition campaign, according to managing director Scott Macmillan.

“We will be out in the project area shooting 2D seismic data for a few months. We’ve started prepping the field camp for the operations which will involve about 100 people,” Mr Macmillan said.

Invictus recently awarded Canadian firm Polaris Natural Resources a contract to undertake seismic survey (gathering earth vibrations).

The firm will use the data gathered from the seismic survey programme to select sites on which oil and gas test wells would be drilled starting in October this year.

Polaris will deploy the world’s newest and smallest wireless recording nodes and receivers to conduct its work.

In a report carried by this publication last month, Polaris chief executive Bill Mooney said the combination of technologies being employed at the Muzarabani project represent not only the lightest seismic footprint possible, but also allows for very fast and high resolution data acquisition.

Mr Mooney said Polaris intends to conduct, process, and interpret a minimum of 400 line kilometres of 2D (two dimensional) seismic in order to refine the Mzarabani-1 drilling location and well path and identify additional prospectivity for the upcoming drilling exercise.

The proposed seismic survey will be conducted with a minimal environmental footprint and utilise existing roads and tracks wherever possible, according to Invictus.

Upon appointment of Polaris sometime in mid-April 2021, Invictus Energy managing director Mr Scott Macmillan described the company as a very experienced contractor working with a very experienced team.

Mr Macmillan said the seismic programme will enable the miner to refine the Muzarabani-1 target defined from the existing seismic dataset.

This will help us fill our prospect inventory ahead of our basin opening drilling campaign, Mr Macmillan said.

The Invictus boss said the company, which has raised millions of United States dollars to support the oil and gas project, was very excited to get the exploration programme underway.

Invictus Cabora Bassa Project, which encompasses the Muzarabani Prospect, is a multi-trillion cubic feet and liquids-rich conventional gas-condensate target, which is potentially the largest, undrilled seismically defined structure onshore Africa.