Mauritania: a different corner

With first oil output scheduled for late 2005, Mauritania is set to become one of Africa?s new energy exporters. Yet the country?s rise to international prominence is largely based on potential, writes Martin Clark

IT IS STILL early days, but there are high hopes for Mauritania, the focal point of an upturn in exploration interest across northwest Africa. Intensive drilling activity and seismic work off the coast underlines the level of confidence some explorers have shown in this new corner of the continent, with millions of dollars being poured into the country since the late 1990s. And for good reason. At the end of 2003, Dana Petroleum struck gas with its first exploration well in the country—the fourth offshore discovery in the last three years. The Pelican-1 well, in block 7—a vast licence area of 13,469 square km, roughly the size of 60 North Sea blocks—encountered a "substantial" hydrocarbons c