Africa is considered to have good hydrocarbon potential, with significant oil production coming from West Africa, and new promising gas discoveries in East Africa.

WSJ: India Plans to Step Up Oil, Gas Investment in Africa

The deal for Mariner is even larger with 181M proven barrels of oil equivalent (47 percent are oil or other hydrocarbon liquids), but according to the press release there is the potential of 2B barrels of oil equivalent among their 50 deepwater prospects.

FORBES: Drilling Into Apache And Mariner

While technical in nature -- using the word "hydrocarbon" to refer to oil, for example -- the letter depicts a process that failed to detect a potential cause of the disaster.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS