Oil & Gas News
Afren (LON:AFR) plc (AFR LN, 115.0p, ? 4.07%) have announced a new oil discovery at their Okoro East exploration well, offshore Nigeria. The well encountered 549 ft true vertical thickness of net oil pay and 41 ft of net gas pay in reservoir sands of excellent quality. The Okoro East exploration well spudded at the end of last year and had already successfully encountered oil in Tertiary reservoir sands equivalent to those already in production at the Okoro main field. This new discovery signifies promising pay at previously unexplored, deeper reservoir levels and suggests further possible prospectivity at these levels elsewhere on the block. The exploration well is being prepared for testing now that logging operation have been completed and Afren is confident that the discovery?s proximity to the already developed Okoro main field and associated infrastructure will enable efficient monetisation of the discovery.
Range Resources (LON:RRL) Limited (BUY, 27p) (RRL LN, 13.25p, ? 20.45%) together with its joint venture partners, Horn Petroleum Corporation (TSX: HRN) and Red Emperor Resources (RMP LN, 22.0p, ? 6.02%), today announced the spudding of the Shabeel-1 well on the Dharoor Block in Puntland, Somalia. Horn Petroleum, the well operator, is currently preparing to drill ahead to a total planned maximum depth of 3,800 metres. Drilling operations have also commenced on the Shabeel North-1 well with the setting of the 30 inch surface casing and the drilling of a 50 meter pilot hole. The Sakson 501 rig will be used to drill both wells which are expected to take approximately 90 days each for drilling and evaluation. These two wells satisfy the first exploration period minimum work obligations of the Production Sharing Contracts for both the Dharoor and Nugaal Blocks. They are the first oil exploration wells to be drilled in over 20 years in the country.
The Shabeel and Shabeel North prospects are located on a Jurassic aged rift system which is part of the same system that has proven to be highly productive in the Masila and Shabwa Basins in Yemen that contain an estimated 6 billion barrels of oil. Both prospects are very large fault block prospects with internal estimates of Prospective Resources of over 300 million barrels of oil (mean 100% basis), with Range's 20% attributable interest being over 60 million barrels. Source…
