Oil & Gas News
Gulf Keystone (BUY, 300p) (GKP LN, 221.0p, ? 8.6%) today confirms that it has been agreed that pursuant to the provisions of the Production Sharing Contract regarding the Shaikan block as amended and the Production Sharing Contract regarding the Akri-Bijeel block as amended, the Third Party Assignment Options held by the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq under the terms of Article 4 of the respective Production Sharing Contracts remain valid and exercisable. After the Government of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has exercised its Third Party Assignment Option in the Shaikan and Akri-Bijeel Production Sharing Contracts ("PSCs"), the respective PSCs will be further amended and Gulf Keystone will issue an appropriate announcement.
Faroe Petroleum (LON:FPM) (FPM LN, 161.75p, ? 1.09%) today announced that due to technical difficulties the drilling of a side-track well on the Butch South West exploration prospect has been brought to a close short of its exploration objective. As announced on 7 December 2011 following the Butch discovery and first side-track appraisal, the licence partnership decided to drill a second side-track well from the same surface location. The objective of this side-track well was to target additional oil volumes in an exploration prospect located to the south of Butch within a new segment containing the same reservoir. However, hole instability problems were encountered whilst drilling the section above the main reservoir and given that this exploration target can be drilled more efficiently and with significantly lower technical risk from a new well located closer to the prospect, the partnership has decided to curtail drilling operations on this side-track. Accordingly the well is being plugged and abandoned. The Butch discovery, announced on 18 October 2011, has opened an exciting new oil play. An appraisal side-track was drilled successfully, directly following the discovery well, proving up light oil in excellent quality reservoir. The operator (Centrica) has calculated a preliminary resource estimate of 30 to 60 million barrels of oil equivalent. The discovery is situated in 66 metres water depth in the Norwegian North Sea, close to significant existing infrastructure with the producing fields Ula, Tambar and Gyda located approximately 7 kilometres to the west, 10 kilometres to the south west and 20 kilometres to the south respectively. The Butch South West exploration target remains un-tested and is an attractive stand-alone exploration opportunity, together with several other new exploration…
