BPC Ltd., Perth, and Norway’s StatoilHydro ASA formed a joint venture to explore for oil and gas off the Bahamas if the government approves license applications.
The companies propose to explore licenses in southwestern Bahamas waters that lie between Miami and central Cuba. The Bahamas commonwealth government could approve the license applications by yearend, BPC said (OGJ, May 18, 2009, Newsletter).
The joint venture territory lies between four other Bahamas blocks wholly held by BPC southwest of Andros Island and six blocks in the Florida Straits off northwestern Cuba operated by Repsol YPF SA in which StatoilHydro holds 30% interest.
Meanwhile, BPC has identified 22 exploration leads on its fully owned Bain, Cooper, Donaldson, and Eneas licenses 225-425 km southeast of Miami and the Miami license 85-150 km east of Miami (Fig. 1). The licenses, awarded in 2007, total 3.874 million acres in 5-535 m of water on the southern Great Bahama Bank and have potential in a Jurassic-Cretaceous carbonate petroleum system.
BPC noted that five wells have been drilled in the Bahamas since 1947, the last one by Tenneco Oil Co. to 21,740 ft about 50 km off Cuba in 1986 that had oil shows in Lower Cretaceous (Table 1).
Exploration history
Exploration of the Bahamas region has occurred generally in 12-year cycles, BPC noted.
The area’s first well, Andros Island-1 on Andros Island, went to a total depth of 14,583 ft in 1947 without encountering significant hydrocarbons.
Gulf Oil Corp. drilled the Gulf 826-Y well west of Key West, Fla. It is the only well to have successfully flowed oil. It flowed 18 bbl of 22-24° gravity oil from an interval of anhydrite and carbonate lithologies below 10,000 ft.
The second well in the Bahamas, drilled by subsidiaries of Chevron and Gulf, was Cay Sal-1. It went to TD 18,906 ft in 1959 and encountered live oil shows from 12,682 ft to total depth but tested no commercial hydrocarbons.
Gulf, Chevron, and Mobil drilled Long Island-1 in 1970 to TD 17,577 ft and plugged after finding minor live hydrocarbon shows around 15,900 ft. Chevron moved the rig to drill Great Isaac-1 to TD 17,847 ft. It found minor live hydrocarbon shows at 16,900-17,700 ft.
“Drilling fluids were 9.2 ppg drilling into the overpressured reservoir and were eventually increased to 16 ppg before drilling on to TD. However, no commercial quantities of hydrocarbons were reported on tests,” BPC said.
