Large and small operators are moving to explore many of the world’s remote and nonproducing regions.
While some energy companies prefer to drill blanket plays in the middle of traditional basins, others devote at least part of their capital budgets to rank wildcatting. A number of the latter are described in OGJ’s E&D Frontiers report, which starts on p. 33.
Here are a few more programs in various stages of progress.
Indonesia and Russia
Lundin Petroleum AB, Stockholm, has a $230 million exploration budget in 2007 that includes the drilling of 19 exploration wells in the UK, Norway, Russia, Sudan, and Indonesia.
The company plans to drill five exploration wells in Indonesia and two wells on the Lagansky Block in the northwestern Caspian Sea off Russia.
PetroChina International and Lundin will drill all five Indonesia wells on the Salawati Basin and Island production licenses (see map, OGJ, Aug. 1, 2005, p. 32). Lundin said the blocks have large remaining land and offshore exploration potential, and that several large structures have been identified in the Sele straits.
Lundin plans to drill Morskaya-1 and a second well on the Lagansky Block, acquired with Valkyries Petroleum Corp. in late 2006. A barge-mounted rig built in Astrakhan will be used to drill the shallow-water Caspian wells. Lundin also plans to shoot 700 km of 2D and 3D seismic.
Sandakan basin
Two groups are exploring blocks in Philippine waters of the southwestern Sulu Sea in the Sandakan basin, which has no offshore production.
Esso Exploration International Ltd. took a farmout from Mitra Energy Ltd. of Malaysia to earn a 50% interest in 2 million acre, deepwater SC 56.
Mitra was acquiring 2,400 line-km of 2D seismic data in late 2006 and planned to shoot a 1,600 sq km 3D seismic survey in the first quarter of 2007 (OGJ Online, Dec. 6, 2006).
Salamander Energy PLC, London, took a farmout from Tap Oil Ltd., Perth, to earn a 35% interest in 4,820 sq km SC 41 in the Sandakan basin off Borneo Island.
Tap Oil retains a 50% interest and operatorship. Water is 200-2,000 m deep on the block.
The SC 41 joint venture agreed to boost the size of the 2007 3D seismic survey to a minimum of 600 sq km (OGJ Online, Feb. 9, 2007).
Existing 2D seismic data reveal the prospectivity of SC 41 to consist of a number of leads interpreted to have the potential for 50-150 million bbl oil accumulations on trend from the Wildebeest-1 exploration well, which discovered 40° gravity oil in 2000.
The Sandakan basin has only 25 wells, and Wildebeest-1 is its only deepwater well.
Alaska North Slope
Brooks Range Petroleum Corp. spudded the Sak River-1 well in mid-March 2007 on the Central North Slope.
It is to be deviated northeasterly from an onshore ice pad to a true vertical depth of 11,500 ft subsea (13,100 ft measured depth) to test Kuparuk and Ivishak formation oil prospects that underlie Gwydyr Bay. If successful, it will be retained as a development well.
The Sak River-1 drillsite is at the end of a six-mile ice road extending north from the Prudhoe Bay Unit S Pad drillsite. The most recent exploration well in the area was drilled in 1997.
The joint venture, which controls 47,866 acres, is also drilling the North Shore Prospect and acquiring 3D seismic surveys to evaluate leads analogous to both prospects.
Chad basins
CNPC International (Chad) Ltd., a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp, took over EnCana Corp.’s holdings in Chad in early 2007 for $202.5 million (OGJ Online, Jan. 15, 2007).
EnCana said it had drilled 11 exploration wells with encouraging results on the holdings, which initially covered more than 108 million acres in seven basins: Lake Chad, Bongor, Logone-Birni, West Doba, Doseo, Salamat, and Erdis.
More than half the acreage is in the southwestern and southern parts of the country bordering Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Central African Republic. The rest borders Libya and Sudan in northeastern Chad.
The deal represented EnCana’s withdrawal from Africa. CNPC has a large and growing presence in Africa with participation in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia.
Chad’s only oil production is the ExxonMobil-operated Chad-Cameroon project in the southwestern part of the country (OGJ Online, Aug. 7, 2006).
