The increasing trend of energy demand and decreasing sources of energy supply makes it imperative on energy companies to locate and develop new sources of energy. Current petroleum exploration activities thus seem to be more focused in frontier basins such as the West Africa Transform Margin (WATM). Venturing into such frontier areas requires an understanding of the factors that control petroleum exploration therein. In this paper, the findings of a research on such factors in the WATM are presented. The roles of innovation & technology development, risk management and economic factors were specifically investigated by analysing both historical data and responses to a survey questionnaire. The results shows that economic factors such as the price of oil & PSC terms; innovation & technology development; adequate risk and quality management are among the main factors that control petroleum exploration in the margin. It further indicates that exploration is set to increase in the area irrespective of the oil price. Exploration activity in the WATM is shown to be described by logistic utility functions which models the evolution of innovation and technology in it.
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