By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 8 -- A joint venture of ConocoPhillips (East Malaysia) Ltd. 40% and Petronas Carigali Sdn. Bhd., the exploration and production arm of Malaysian national oil company Petronas, 60% has signed a production-sharing agreement with Petronas for development of Kebabangan oil field off Sabah, Malaysia.
Petronas said the JV would commit a minimum of $8.375 million to the block. A joint operating company will be established in Kuala Lumpur to reprocess 300 sq km of 3D seismic data, drill an appraisal well with a minimum aggregate depth of 2,600 m, and develop the field if results prove it commercially viable. Kebabangan is believed to have reserves of 100-300 million bbl of oil.
The JV also will delineate further development opportunities and near-field appraisal prospects.
Field history
Royal Dutch Shell unit Sabah Shell Petroleum Co. Ltd. discovered Kebabangan field in 1994 on deepwater Block J about 94 km northwest of Kota Kinabalu in water 120-295 m deep. Shell's contract entitled it to discover gas only, but the initial exploration well encountered both a thick gas column with a thin oil rim and oil, which was 300 m below the point where Shell had expected to find gas.
Shell's 1985 production-sharing contract mandated the cut-off point for Shell's production to be 2,438 m below the sea surface—a depth above the oil pay.
An appraisal well drilled to 3,194 m in 2002 penetrated gas and an oil column in several reservoir intervals, encountering 300 m of oil pay below the expected gas pay zone in Upper Miocene turbidite sands. Well tests showed the oil to be light and of high quality, Shell said. Flow rates are thought to have been as much as 10,000 b/d of oil from two zones.
