By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Feb. 23 -- Ankara-based Aladdin Middle East Ltd. (AME), operator of Karakilise oil field and the Karakilise licenses in the Diyarbakir petroleum district of southeast Turkey, plans to commence drilling the Karakilise-2 oil appraisal well in mid-March.
The region in southeastern Turkey forms the north flank of the Arabian basin and lies adjacent to the major oil field belt of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. It has fewer wells/acre than in the rest of the Arabian basin, with a great number of play-types and prospects untested.
Karakilise field, 60 km south of a producing oil trend of 18 fields, is estimated to have 22 million bbl of reserves, and the license area holds reserves with an overall potential exceeding 80 million bbl (OGJ Online, Oct. 7, 2003).
The Karakilise-1 discovery well, which began production in mid-September 2003, has produced 26,000 bbl of 32.5° light crude, and an engineering study is under way to optimize its production, said AME's 50% working partner Avenue Energy Inc., Ankara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Avenue Group Inc., Sherman Oaks, Calif.
"Recent laboratory analyses of the light, sweet crude produced at Karakilise-1 indicates a likely Silurian source for the oil, implying that vertical migration of oil into the younger Cretaceous fractured limestone reservoir is a distinct possibility," said Avenue's Director of Exploration Jaap Poll. "Reservoir sections in Lower Mesozoic and Palaeozoic sequences overlying the Silurian source rock may have been charged by this vertically migrating oil. This augurs well for the possible development of multiple productive horizons in the Karakilise structure and indeed in similar untested structures in the Karakilise and nearby licenses."
Poll said the fractured limestone reservoir at Karakilise is typical of the productive Cretaceous oil reservoirs in the region, and because the Karakilise-1 well penetrated only the top section of the oil zone in the uppermost Mardin Formation, information on the actual thickness of the Mardin oil column and true production capabilities of this reservoir section are not currently available.
"The next step in the exploration and appraisal program will therefore be to drill further into the Mardin section in the Karakilise-2 well," he said. "Thereafter deeper drilling will be required to investigate the possibility of multiple pay zones in the Lower Cretaceous and Palaeozoic sections."
Turnkey drilling costs of drilling the Karakilise-2 well will be about $3 million.
