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Friday, July 25, 2014
Pancontinental Oil & Gas reported that the 3D and 2D seismic surveys carried out earlier in 2014 over EL 0037 offshore Namibia are starting to yield very encouraging results. The company said that initial mapping confirmed at least four main prospects in the 3D area; the Albatross, Gannett, Petrel, and the Seagull prospects. The prospects appear to be large and robust according to Pancontinental (up to 300 sq km in area), and are in favorable geological settings.
Additional prospects and leads are expected to be mapped within and outside the 3D area in due course.
The Albatross prospect is currently mapped to cover approximately 300 sq km and assessed to have potential to contain 422 million barrels of oil (gross unrisked mean), or 1.093 billion barrels of oil (P10 basis). Albatross is a large base-of-slope turbidite fan of mid to early Cretaceous age. The chance of success for the Albatross Prospect is currently estimated at 17%.
Albatross is interpreted to be horizontally and vertically close to the ‘fairway’ of mature oil source rocks identified by Pancontinental and subsequently verified in the Wingat-1 well drilled in the adjacent exploration license area. Good oil-prone and oil-mature source rocks were seen, and live oil was recovered from Wingat-1 in 2013.
A number of other prospects and leads have been identified in addition to Albatross in the very large EL 0037 area of some 17,000 sq km. Other prospects and leads are currently assessed to have potential to hold gross mean risked resources exceeding 150 million barrels of oil. Pancontinental emphasizes that the early prospective resource estimates above are made using existing data, and will be subject to change when fully processed 3D and 2D data become available and these have been interpreted and mapped.
Further, it is expected that a number of additional large prospects will be identified and mapped as possible drilling targets in the course of seismic data interpretation.
Processing is ongoing on the 2D and 3D seismic survey data acquired early in 2014. It is anticipated that ‘fast track’ processed results will be available mid- to late-August and fully processed data will be available in September 2014. The results of complete mapping from the fully processed data are expected in October 2014.
Following full mapping, the prospects will be examined for drilling potential. The EL 0037 JV will then be in a position to determine drilling sites and dates.
The company went on to discuss the Tullow Oil farm in saying that as Tullow’s commitment under the agreement with Pancontinental, Tullow has carried out a 3,000 sq km 3D seismic survey and a 1,000 line km 2D survey at its own cost. Pancontinental has retained a 30% free-carried interest through the surveys, at no cost to Pancontinental. To maintain its 65% farm in interest, Tullow must fully free-carry Pancontinental’s 30% interest through one exploration well. Pancontinental estimates farm-in expenditure of potentially up to $130 million (100% basis) for the full work program.
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