DAKAR, Senegal — Production has started at Senegal's first offshore oil project, the Australian group Woodside Energy said Tuesday, as the country's new government eyes higher profits from natural resources.
The vessel extracting the oil is moored about 100 kilometers offshore at the Sangomar oil fields. The project aims to produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day, the statement said. “The exploitation of our natural resources, which according to the constitution belong to the people, will receive particular attention from my government,” President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said in his first address to the nation in April. “I will proceed with the disclosure of the effective ownership of extractive companies with an audit of the mining, oil, and gas sector.”
“First oil from the Sangomar field marks a new era not only for our country’s industry and economy, but most importantly for our people," the general manager of Petrosen, Thierno Ly, said in the statement.