Savannah Energy is pulling together an ambitious plan to begin in 2023 a multi-well drilling campaign on long-neglected oil assets in Chad that it is acquiring from ExxonMobil and Petronas for $626 million.

Assuming the deal completes as planned in July, Savannah will spend the remainder of this year on well optimisation and workover activities, before embarking on an infill drilling campaign in 2023 set to average 12 wells per year through to 2030.

The resource potential of Chad's Doba basin play is significant, with chief executive Andrew Knott telling Upstream that no wells have been drilled on the assets since 2015 and only 16% of the in-place oil has been tapped.