MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Ivory Coast
Index
The exploratory oil wells revealed large reserves of
natural
gas, some of which were associated with the oil fields. In
1987
estimates of the Espoir and Foxtrot gas reserves off the
coast of
Abidjan amounted to 3.5 billion cubic feet, or enough to
produce 55
million cubic feet a day for twenty years. Apart from
reducing the
country's dependence on fuel oil, the government sought to
use the
gas to generate electricity--thus justifying its purchase
of four
large gas-powered turbines during the drought of
1983-84--and to
produce fertilizer. In late 1987, the government and
Phillips
Petroleum were still trying to negotiate an acceptable
price for
the gas. Start-up costs for drilling two producer wells
and
constructing a sixty-kilometer gas pipeline to the thermal
power
station at Vridi were estimated at US$150 million in 1986.
Data as of November 1988
|
|