Oil Search Ltd., Sydney, Australia, has built a large portfolio of acreage in Yemen since 2000 and plans to drill in the Gulf of Aden in 2006.
Most of the company’s blocks are on land, but Mukalla Block 15 lies along the coast in the nonproducing Sharmah rift basin east of Mukalla.
Oil Search acquired an 80.75% interest in Block 15 in 2000. It remains operator, but its interest is 45% following a farmout to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co.
The Australian independent has Northern Offshore Ltd.’s Energy Searcher drillship under contract.
The tight deepwater rig market and timing of the vessel’s availability will have delayed the start of drilling at least a year. Spud is set for March 2006. Water on Block 15 is 100-800 m deep.
ENI SPA’s Agip (Overseas) Ltd. subsidiary explored this part of the basin in the 1980s. Of 6 wells drilled, Sharmah-1X was the only potentially commercial success, but the drilling demonstrated the presence of an active petroleum system.
Sharmah-1X flowed 3,045 b/d of 43° gravity oil from Eocene fractured limestone at 7,220 ft after an acid job in 1982. It is 5 miles offshore in 440 ft of water (OGJ, Apr. 12, 1982, p. 66).
Other wells tested Cretaceous and Eocene hydrocarbons, and Oil Search said reprocessing of Agip’s seismic data showed a number of untested play types. Since then Oil Search has acquired or reprocessed a total of 10,000 km of seismic data on the block.
Oligocene clastics would be the objective at the Oil Search-Kufpec Riyan-1 a few miles west of Sharmah-1X. The drillsite is about 30 miles east of the Ash Shihr terminal at the end of the oil pipeline from Nexen Inc.’s Masila basin fields. End-September Nabrajah output was 7,500 b/d from four Qishn wells.
The Shuhayr prospect is also to be drilled. Oil Search’s contract with Northern Offshore calls for the drilling of the two wells plus options on further work. Partners in Block 15 besides Kufpec are Emirates Exploration & Oil Field Development. State owned Yemen Oil Co. is carried through the exploration phase.
Meanwhile, DNO ASA, Oslo, and Oil Search started production on July 12, 2005, from the Cretaceous Qishn sandstone reservoir in Nabrajah field on Block 43 just east of Nexen’s Masila fields.
The Nabrajah-5 well discovered what Oil Search called a significant new oil pool in the deeper Kohlan formation and basement. The company, which is appraising the deeper accumulation, made a preliminary judgment that 40-70 million bbl would be recoverable from Nabrajah.
Nabrajah is Oil Search’s first discovery outside Papua New Guinea, its primary operating area. Oil Search also operates Block 35, adjacent to Block 43 in the Masila basin, and blocks 3, 7, and 74 in the Shabwah basin. ✦
