Oil and gas group Serica Energy (LON:SQZ) this morning reported that the Trident IX jack-up drilling rig had spudded the Marindan-1 well in the southern part of the Kutai production sharing contract, offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The well is targeting five separate multilayer clastic and carbonate reservoirs of late Miocene to early Pliocene age in the interval from 1,400 to 3,500 metres measured depth and will be deviated at a maximum angle of approximately 30 degrees in order to reach each target at the optimum subsurface location. The reservoirs have been prognosed on the basis of offset well data and modern 3D seismic.
The Marindan well is being drilled about 2.5km from the Pegah-1 well drilled by a previous operator in 1974. Pegah-1 found trace shows of oil and produced a small volume of gas during a drill stem test. Water depth at the well location is 55m and the well is expected to take approximately 30 days to complete.
Earlier this month Serica plugged and abandoned the Dambus-1 exploration well in the northern offshore part of the Kutai PSC after concluding that its hydrocarbon-bearing sands were uncommercial. The Marindan prospect is in the southern offshore part of the PSC. Both oil and gas discoveries have been made in the offshore Mahakam Delta and the Kutai PSC is immediately adjacent to several major producing fields. Serica is operator of the Kutai PSC and holds a 30% interest while Salamander Energy Plc (LON:SMDR) holds 23.4%. Other partners include KrisEnergy with 24.6% and PT Ephindo with 22%.
Elsewhere today, Serica said it had been awarded a production licence over Blocks 210/19a and 210/20a in the Northern North Sea (NNS) as part of the 26th Round of UK Offshore Licensing. Possible grants of further licences applied for by Serica remain subject to the results of environmental assessments by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Serica will be the operator of the new licence and has a 100% interest. Blocks 210/19a and 210/20a are contiguous part blocks immediately adjacent to the Otter field in the region. A number of oil prospects have been provisionally identified on the blocks at Jurassic Brent Group and Home Sand levels. Two of the Brent Group prospects are down-faulted…
SQZ apparently has a reputation for being very leaky and there were rumours on ADVFN the other day that oil had been found. The SP has gone up strongly today and maybe some sort of success is on the way.
I bought in a week or so ago and added today as the share price started to lift.
Latest presentation here
http://www.serica-energy.com/downloads/pdf/2010-06-25-Serica-AGM-Presentation-2010.pdf
Pages 18 and 21 of relevance here.
Serica looks cheap to me;-)
repo
.gif)
