Jacka Resources Ltd (ASX: JKA) (“Jacka” or “The Company”) announced on 30 June 2011 that is was in negotiations for the award of oil and gas exploration and production rights over the Ruhuhu Basin in South West Tanzania. The Company is pleased to further announce that it has recently greed all of the terms of the Production Sharing Agreement (“PSA”) with the Tanzania Petroleum and Development Corporation (“TPDC”) and the document has been initialled by both parties. The agreement remains subject to final government approval and signature.

The company anticipates beginning the work program as early as the second quarter 2012, with high resolution airborne gravity amongst the early works planned.

Tanzania is underexplored but is fast becoming an international oil and gas exploration hot spot. The country has grabbed petroleum industry headlines over the past 12 months following the announcement of three sizeable, offshore gas discoveries by an Ophir Energy-led Joint Venture. It is now attracting the attention of industry leaders, with companies such as Shell, Statoil, Total, Petrobras, Exxon and Tullow entering the country. Tanzania is considered to have significant exploration potential within the offshore deep water blocks and within the onshore ‘East African Rift’ basins, located in the central and western parts of the country. 

The NE-SW trending Ruhuhu Basin in southern Tanzania is one of a chain of Karoo basins across southern Africa formed during the break up of Pangea in the late Carboniferous / early Permian Period. The basin is located fully onshore and abuts the North East shore of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi).

Conventional and unconventional exploration plays exist, with potential for multiple charge systems being a significant de-risking feature:

The basal Ruhuhu section contains post-glacial, early Permian euxinic lacustrine shales, rich in TOC (total organic content) and modelled to have reached oil mid-maturity within the basin. These lacustrine shales are genetically related to those that have sourced the heavy oil in the Bemolanga tar sands of west Madagascar (reported resource of 22 billion barrels).

The Ruhuhu Basin is truncated to the west by the Lake Malawi (Nyasa) Basin of the modern East African Rift (EAR). The Nyasa Basin is believed to contain TOC rich sediments similar to those of the genetically related Albertine graben in western Uganda, where one billion barrels of oil reserves have been proven since 2006.ntified vein systems