GEP to drill Iraq wildcat near Shaikan find

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Aug. 30 -- ShaMaran Petroleum Corp., Vancouver, BC, acquired a 33.5% of the shares of General Exploration Partners Inc., a subsidiary of Aspect Energy International LLC.

Consideration is $24.1 million cash, 12.5 million shares of ShaMaran, and a future obligation to contribute the next $15.9 million required to fund GEP’s operations. All except the share consideration are to be added to a GEP cost pool to be repaid to ShaMaran BV from future oil production.

GEP owns 80% of contractor rights and obligations in the production sharing contract on the Atrush block in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, and the Kurdistan Regional Government owns 20%.

Atrush is north of and adjacent to Shaikan discovery announced by Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. in January. The 2D seismic data over Atrush indicate that the structure is similar to the Shaikan structure.

Shaikan has multiple stacked oil reservoirs in the Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic sections (OGJ Online, Aug. 11, 2010). Estimated potential resource is reported as a mean of 4.2 billion bbl of oil. Atrush is also adjacent to and on trend with the recent Bijeel oil discovery to the east, operated by Kalegran Ltd.

The Atrush-1 exploration well location has been approved, and the well is expected to spud in September. Projected to 3,100 m, it is prognosed to encounter the same reservoir sections as Shaikan and will also test the structural extension of the Shaikan discovery into the Atrush block as indicated from 2D seismic.

Of the ten expected target reservoirs in Atrush-1, nine were confirmed to be oil-bearing in Shaikan while the Lower Kurrachine encountered high-pressure gas. Upside potential lies in the shallower Cretaceous Qamchuga formation and the deeper Permian section, not reached in Shaikan, which is also indicated by seismic data to have closure in Atrush.