Welcome

Explore Sri Lanka

Take advantage of new acreage opportunities, new legislation and new data.
We invite you to navigate the transitional energy journey, in the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

PROGRESS | PROSPER | PROVIDE

An Invitation to Invest in Upstream Sri Lanka

New Opportunities

Smaller blocks, available to investors on short-term joint exploration / study programs enables a flexible and low-risk entry point

New Legislation

The benefits of new Policies and Acts include paths to commercialise offshore oil & gas and carry significant investor protection

New Data

Activity in recent years have delivered a significant upsurge of spec seismic, gravity, gradiometry and magnetic data

New Opportunities

Investors may now apply for customised groups of blocks, as practiced in more mature jurisdictions. This provides operators flexibility and value add ranging from desktop studies to exploration wells to create an active after-market for acreage. Government rules on relinquishment, farm-ins and farm-outs are designed to increase petroleum activity across all Sri Lankan offshore basins and attract competent operators of all sizes.

New offshore exploration and development block map.
Small blocks with freedom to group as desired, offered under joint exploration licenses.
Gas discoveries available for rapid development.
New and reprocessed data available through multiclient programmes.
Priority, high-potential offshore wind development areas identified by the World Bank’s Offshore Wind Roadmap for Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s National Hydrogen Roadmap published by the PDASL

New Legislation

Sri Lanka is a safe and secure destination open for business and welcoming investment. A National Policy on Natural Gas was gazetted in September 2020, outlining domestic demand creation strategies and providing operators with options to commercialise offshore gas. A new Petroleum Resources Act No. 21 of 2021 introduced independent regulation, policy and operations functions and enhanced investor protection.

National Policy on Natural Gas
New Petroleum Resources Act No. 21 of 2021
New and independent upstream Regulator, the Petroleum Development Authority of Sri Lanka (PDASL)
Open Data Room Policy at the PDASL offices in Colombo
New Petroleum Resources Regulations, including Joint Study Regulations, gazetted.

New Data

Whether your interest is green energy, energy storage or oil & gas, opportunities are plenty within the offshore basins of Sri Lanka.

Offshore Sri Lanka consist of four sub-basins: Cauvery, Mannar, South Lanka, and East Lanka. Past discoveries have proven the petroleum system in Mannar basin. The main potential source rock intervals are reported in the Mesozoic section have matured and generated good volumes of hydrocarbon.

Together with our multiclient partners SLB (formerly Schlumberger) and Bell Geospace we have continued to acquire, process and reprocess the Sri Lankan dataset.

Seismic
Gravity/ Gradiometry

Schlumberger have applied modern broadband processing and imaging workflow to the previously available data offering new insights. Prestack time (PreSTM) and prestack depth (PreSDM) imaged data in Sri Lanka offshore frontier basins are now available for:

Completing global basin portfolios
Establishing regional geologic framework
Identifying, mapping, predicting source, reservoir, and seals of plays
Evaluation and screening of prospectivity to formulate a competitive strategy to optimize exploration work programs

Bell Geospace commenced data acquisition over the offshore Sri Lankan blocks M1, M2, C1 in August 2021. Data and interpretation is available over these blocks as well as elsewhere in Cauvery/Mannar.

The high resolution Full Tensor Gravity Gradiometry and magnetic data makes sense of the subsurface geology in the shallow waters of western offshore Sri Lanka.

An example application of these data is an ability to overcome challenges with the flood volcanic layer and lack of existing data coverage in the transition zone.

Airborne gravity, gradiometry and magnetic data will help operators looking to determine: