Oil & Gas News
Max Petroleum (LON:MXP) (BUY, 50p) (MXP LN, 13.5p, ? 5.26%) today announced that the ASK-2 well in the Asanketken field has been drilled to a total depth of 3,412 metres without encountering any viable reservoirs in the deeper Triassic section, which was the primary objective. In October, the field reached an intermediate casing point at 2000 metres and revealed 12 metres of net oil pay in Jurassic reservoirs between depths 1284 and 1308metres. Reservoir quality was deemed "excellent", with porosities ranging from 25% to 30%. The well will now be completed as a production well in the shallower Jurassic reservoir at depths between 1,281 and 1,287 metres and the PM Lucas ZJ-50 rig will be released.
Ithaca Energy (LON:IAE) (IAE LN, 129.5p, ? 0.19%) today announced progress on the BW Athena Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel. The FPSO conversion scope, which is the responsibility of BW Offshore, has proved to be more extensive than was envisaged at the start of the project. In spite of the increase in the amount of work required, BW Offshore and Dubai Dry Docks have completed a fast track engineering project to deliver the vessel very close to the original schedule.
After very recent consultation on health and safety requirements, additional redundancy is being introduced in the vessel power and heading control systems in response to the North Sea incident in 2011, when the Gryphon FPSO suffered a mooring system failure. The additional work now being undertaken is aimed at ensuring that production startup is not delayed once the vessel has arrived at the Athena field. Payments for the vessel by the Athena Joint Venture remain unchanged and will commence, by way of a day rate to BW Offshore, only once the FPSO is moored over the Athena field and produced oil is transferred into the vessel's storage tanks. Once the vessel leaves Dubai, it will sail to the North Sea and hook up to the pre-installed production buoy. In-field commissioning will be minimized by the comprehensive dockside commissioning being undertaken in Dubai. The journey to the UK and in-field pre startup works will take approximately 5 weeks. Accordingly, the FPSO will remain in Dubai docks to complete all commissioning work and some minor modifications to the vessel power and heading control systems. It is now anticipated…
