London (Somalia Today) – Soma Oil and Gas Ltd., a British Virgin Islands-registered company focused on offshore petroleum exploration in Somalia, is seeking U.S. partners as new drilling activity revives interest in one of Africa’s least explored energy frontiers.
The company is looking for strategic partnerships and farm-out opportunities, according to a U.S. Justice Department filing linked to Sami Michl, who owns a 10 per cent stake in Soma O&G.
The filing says Michl is available for meetings, correspondence, telephone and video calls, introductions, presentations, document review, and the preparation and review of business materials.
The outreach comes as Somalia tries to turn decades of offshore promise into a functioning petroleum sector after civil war, weak institutions and persistent insecurity kept major international companies away for more than 30 years.
A farm-out deal would allow Soma to bring in a larger or better-capitalised partner by assigning part of its interest in exchange for funding, technical support, or assistance in meeting future exploration obligations.
Such deals are common in frontier oil basins, where companies often share the high costs and risks of seismic work, drilling, security, logistics and political uncertainty before any commercial discovery.
Renewed offshore interest
Soma says it holds a 100 per cent working interest in production sharing agreements covering offshore blocks 129 and 130, as well as block 192.
Together, the acreage covers more than 10,000 square kilometres off Somalia’s coast, in waters the company describes as part of a largely underexplored offshore basin.
The company has promoted the blocks as having potential for significant discoveries, but the prospects remain unproven. No commercial reserves have been confirmed.
The timing of Soma’s U.S. push is significant.
Turkey’s Cagri Bey drillship arrived off Mogadishu in April 2026 to begin a deep-sea drilling campaign, marking Ankara’s first overseas offshore drilling operation.
The campaign follows a 2024 energy cooperation agreement between Somalia and Turkey and a seismic survey by the Turkish research vessel Oruç Reis.
The planned well is expected to test deepwater prospects off the Somali coast and could take months to complete.
No commercial discovery has been announced, but the drilling campaign has moved Somalia’s oil sector from years of speculation and political debate into a more active exploration phase.
For Somalia, the operation marks a major step in efforts to revive a petroleum industry that has long existed mostly on paper.
For investors, it presents a familiar frontier calculation: large geological upside, limited drilling history, high operating costs and serious political and security risks.
Long-delayed oil hopes
Somalia has the longest coastline on mainland Africa and sits along strategic maritime routes linking the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
Before the central government collapsed in 1991, major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco, BP and Italy’s ENI, held exploration rights in Somalia.
The civil war froze most activity and left Somalia’s offshore geology far less explored than neighbouring East African basins.
Discoveries in countries such as Mozambique and Tanzania helped draw global attention to East Africa’s offshore potential over the past two decades, but Somalia largely missed that investment wave because of conflict, terrorism and uncertainty over legal authority.
Mogadishu has since tried to rebuild the sector through new laws, institutions and revenue-sharing arrangements.
Somalia’s petroleum framework established the Somali Petroleum Authority to oversee licensing, production-sharing agreements, permits, and compliance.
The federal government has also sought to reassure investors that future oil revenues will be shared between Mogadishu, federal member states and local authorities.
Those arrangements remain politically sensitive in a country where disputes over power, resources and federal authority continue to shape relations between the central government and regional administrations.
High-risk frontier play
Security remains the main obstacle for any U.S. company weighing a role in Somalia’s offshore sector.
Soma’s name also carries regulatory history.
The UK Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation in 2015 into earlier Soma-linked activity after allegations raised by United Nations monitors.
Prosecutors dropped the case in 2016 after concluding there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.
U.S. interest in Somalia’s offshore sector is not new.
In 2022, Somalia signed an exploration agreement for seven offshore blocks with U.S.-based Coastline Exploration, in a deal seen as an early test of the country’s revived petroleum framework.
Soma’s current outreach appears aimed at using the renewed momentum around Somalia’s offshore sector to attract capital, technical support and international credibility.
For potential partners, the opportunity remains a high-risk frontier play.
It offers access to a large offshore position in a strategically located country, an improving legal framework and renewed drilling activity.
But it also comes with severe security constraints, governance scrutiny and the uncertainty of unproven deepwater geology.
For Somalia, the interest shows that its offshore potential continues to attract attention despite decades of instability.
But the road from exploration interest to commercial production remains long, costly and uncertain.
