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Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Caracal Energy has a lot to report out of Chad, including a new discovery and the spudding of a new well. On the discovery end the company hit with the drilling of its Krim-1 exploration well encountering hydrocarbons in the targeted Cretaceous C, D, and E sands. The Cretaceous E sands were tested at up to 2,580 bpd of oil.
The Krim discovery is located southwest of the Mangara field. Due to the proximity to infrastructure, Caracal and its partners believe they can fast track Krim’s development. Depending on routing, Krim-1 is approximately 5-10 km from the pipeline at Mangara.
The well was suspended following the Cretaceous E sands test, as the completion rig was required to test and complete Badila-4 (below) for production. The completion rig has now returned to Krim to complete the testing of the Cretaceous C and D sands later this month. The estimated pay from petrophysical information is 45.5 meters for the C sands and 105 meters for the D sands. Upon a successful test from the C and D sands, the company expects an increase in reserves as currently no reserves are assigned to these sands. This will require the construction of a 5-10 km tie-in to the existing Mangara-Badila pipeline.
Caracal also saw the spud of the Bitanda exploration well on December 5. The planned total drilling depth is 2,390 meters and drilling is expected to take 32 days. The current operation is drilling at 700 meters. Bitanda is the third exploration test well following the recent success at Krim and the Cretaceous E sands in the Mangara field. Bitanda was recently confirmed as a structural three-way closure, bounded by the basin margin fault using the 3D seismic shot earlier this year.
In addition the company has started mobilizing a seismic contractor to shoot 2D and 3D seismic. Much of the planned 1,500 line km of 2D seismic will be focused on well placement for structures to be drilled in the 2014-2016 exploration programs as well as identifying additional prospects currently not captured in the company’s estimates.
Gary Guidry, CEO, said: “We are on schedule for first revenue which is expected in Q1 2014. Our team, along with partners GlencoreXstrata and Société des Hydrocarbures du Tchad, have done an exceptional job of establishing continuous production into the ETS. Our development drilling and construction of additional facilities and transportation infrastructure has also continued, and we are on track to provide additional production from Badila and Mangara fields in the coming months. In addition to the significant production increases expected next year, we plan to test over a billion barrels in unrisked prospective resources in 2014 through our high impact exploration program.”
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