Zambia: Bowleven awarded three blocks

Edinburgh-based Bowleven has been granted three exploration blocks in Zambia’s recent licensing round. The previously unlicensed blocks 25, 28 and 29 lie in the Luangwa Rift Valley, a north-east to south-west trending rift basin which last saw exploration in the 1980s. The initial exploration period includes a minimum work programme estimated at $500,000. The government held the bid round after issuing default notices to companies that had failed to carry out exploration work (AE 263/13). Bowleven also has Kenyan Block 11B with Chris Matchette-Downes’ Adamantine Energy, where an airborne geophysical survey is almost complete, as well as its core assets in Cameroon, where development has been slowed by the need to find a market for the gas associated with the oil.