Oil & Gas Corporate News
Max Petroleum (LON:MXP) (BUY, £0.50) (MXP, 18.75p, ? (5.63%)) has completed drilling the ALTW-1 exploration well on the West Altykol prospect on Block E. The well reached a total depth of 1,947m without encountering producible hydrocarbons and will be plugged and abandoned. The Sun ZJ-30 drilling rig will now move to drill the ZMA-ET1 appraisal well testing Triassic reservoirs in the Zhana Makat Field on Block E.
Comment: Not a good result for Max Petroleum as the West Altykol structure was a 4-way dip closure, albeit of modest size with pre-drill resources estimate of 13MMbbl. The Asanketken prospect, where a well was spudded on the 16th, is larger at 50MMbbl.
Encore Oil (LON:EO.) (EO, 119.25p, ? (0.21%)) noted the announcement issued by Sterling Resources regarding the Cladhan discovery in UK Northern North Sea Blocks 210/29a and 210/30a. Sterling announced that drilling is expected to commence within the next few days at Cladhan. The objective of the current program is to drill further down dip, again looking for deeper oil in the structure to the east of the previous wells. This will be followed by a sidetrack to a second location to an undrilled channel further south of the current well penetrations. Assuming success with both of these wells, there is an option for the Transocean Prospect to drill a second sidetrack from the same well out into the fan system. Information from this drilling campaign will aid in the planning of the field development conceptual design already underway. The expected drilling time for these 3 wells is 40 days, 25 days and 30 days, respectively. Encore has 16.6% interest.
Aminex (LON:AEX) (AEX, 9.5p, ? (2.56%)) announced the results of an audit on its oil and gas reserves in the USA effective 1 January 2011. 1P reserves net to Aminex amounted to 2,544,400boe, which is independently valued at US$49.4m. Net 2P reserves amounted to 4,781,800 boe valued at US$70m. AEX also announced the results of an independent assessment of the potential of the Nyuni Production Sharing Agreement. The gas potential from two wells already drilled by the Company to be 278BCF on a Pmean basis, from the combination of two separate accumulations. These are categorised as 'contingent resources' and not as 'reserves'. Independently assessed 'prospective resources' at Nyuni, that…
