Area Drilling

March 19, 2007

Bahrain

National Oil & Gas Authority and Bahrain Petroleum Co. will launch a bid round on Mar. 12 for Bahrain offshore exploration blocks and onshore field reactivation projects.

The round, to close in September 2007, will include four exploration blocks that take in the country’s entire offshore acreage in the Persian Gulf. Fugro Robertson Ltd., North Wales, UK, will promote the exploration blocks.

Germany

Considerable oil potential remains in the German North Sea, said RWE Dea AG, Hamburg.

The company in 2006 was exploring for hydrocarbons off Schleswig-Holstein with Wintershall Holding AG, Kassel, and off the coast of Lower Saxony with Gaz de France.

Mittelplate tidelands field, source of most of RWE Dea’s production, produced 17.5 million tonnes of crude from October 1987 through the end of 2006 (OGJ Online, Mar. 7, 2006). RWE Dea and Wintershall have 50-50 interests in Mittelplate, Germany’s largest oil field.

Meanwhile, onshore in northern Germany, RWE Dea analyzed cuttings from chalk reservoirs in wells on the Heide and Hennstedt concessions and found them unsuitable for commercial production presently. It began field preparations for a 3D seismic survey aimed at measuring oil potential on the Hahnenhorn concession east of Hanover.

Utah

Delta Petroleum Corp., Denver, plans to drill two more exploration wells in the Utah Hingeline play in 2007 in its program with Armstrong Oil & Gas Corp., private Denver independent.

The unsuccessful Delta-operated Joseph Federal-1 well, spud in late 2006, encountered the Jurassic Navajo formation at 12,523 ft, about 7,000 ft deeper than prognosis. The well encountered an unanticipated igneous intrusive that distorted the initial geophysical interpretation, Delta said.

The company is processing an aeromagnetic survey shot over the Hingeline and said it sees no evidence of such an igneous body at 18 of the 20 other identified prospects. Only one other well in the trend has encountered an intrusive of any significant size, Delta added.