Gulfsands Petroleum (LON:GPX) , the oil and gas group active in Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Italy and the US, has reported mixed results from the latest two exploration wells drilled close to its Khurbet East Field in Syria. The Twaiba 1 well, which lies just 7km from Gulfsands’ original KHE-1 discovery well, turned out to be a success but the Zahraa 1 on the north-easterly Zahraa prospect, was disappointing.

Gulfsands owns a 50% working interest and is operator of Block 26 in north-east Syria. Its production fields at Khurbet East and Yousefieh are currently producing at a combined rate of approximately 21,000 barrels per day. In today’s update, the company said it had appointed oilfield engineering group Sapiem to build a Central Processing Facility at Khurbet East in a deal worth €94m. That facility will initially be able to take oil production to 33,000 barrels per day. The facility should now be finished by September 2012.

Gulfsands’ 100% owned Twaiba 1 exploration well was drilled to a total depth of 2016 metres. Preliminary interpretation of drilling data and wire-line logs have identified two net pay intervals within the regionally productive Cretaceous aged reservoir section, the ‘Shiranish’ and ‘Massive’ formations.

The Shiranish formation contains a net pay section of approximately 31 metres, from 1872-2003 metres, with average porosity of approximately 21%. A production liner has been cemented in place over this interval, and a production test will be undertaken once testing has been completed on the slightly deeper Massive formation reservoir. The Massive formation contains a net reservoir section of approximately eight metres, with average porosity of approximately 15%. An open-hole drill-stem test will be conducted over the interval 1952 - 1970 metres. Following completion of the testing programme the well will be suspended as a potential future production well. After completion of operations, the rig will be moved to the Abu Ghazal 1 location.

The Zahraa 1 well, which was also drilled on a sole risk basis, encountered the top of the Shiranish formation, the shallowest potentially productive reservoir for the Zahraa prospect, at a depth of 1802m, and the base of the Cretaceous aged section was encountered at 2394 metres. Due to very poor hole conditions it was not possible to obtain a suite of wire-line logs over the reservoir objective…

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