By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, June 23 -- Nonproducing Uganda has its first flowing oil test as the Waraga-1 indicated discovery delivers 1,500 b/d of 33.8° gravity oil to surface on a 36/64-in. choke, operator Hardman Resources Ltd., Perth, said June 23.
The apparent discovery, in the Albert graben just off the eastern shore of Lake Albert, also represents the first oil flow in East Africa south of Sudan, Hardman pointed out. The oil could be waxy, it added.
The company plans 14 days of tests at Waraga, which encountered three hydrocarbon-bearing horizons, but Hardman said the early flow stabilized sufficiently "to derive composition, flow characteristics, and key reservoir parameters."
Without giving depths, Hardman said Waraga encountered a shallow 32-m gross oil interval, a medium-depth 27-m gross oil column with a probable oil-water contact, and the deeper 5-m light oil section, now production tested, with excellent reservoir quality. TD is 2,010 m in basement.
Waraga-1 is on 3,735 sq km Block 2 about 220 km northwest of Kampala. The well is 350 miles south-southeast of nearest production, by a China National Petroleum Co.-led group, in the Muglad basin of southern Sudan. It is also east of the vast unexplored eastern interior of Congo (former Zaire).
Waraga is 19 km northeast of Hardman's Maputa-1 and Maputa-2, both of which encountered hydrocarbons (OGJ Online, June 2, 2006).
Block 2 interests are Hardman and Tullow Oil PLC, London, 50% each.
