Offshore staff

EDINBURGH, UK -- Cairn Lanka hopes to begin acquiring seismic data offshore Sri Lanka late this year or early in 2010.

The government of Sri Lanka granted the company a license last October to explore for oil and gas in the Mannar basin. The block covers an area of around 3,000 sq km (1,158 sq mi), in water depths from 200-1,800 m (656-5,905 ft).

Cairn Lanka's parent company Cairn India plans a further 3D seismic program offshore India, following two marine 2D surveys last year. These included 3,100 km (1,926 mi) of new data in block PR-OSN-2004/1 in the Krishna-Godavari basin, currently undergoing processing and interpretation.

Cairn's longest-running production center offshore India is the Ravva field, where output has been averaging 52,539 boe/d.

An infill drilling campaign was completed in March 2008, which led to seven new development wells coming on line. The partners also installed a new subsea 14-in. (35.6-cm) oil pipeline from the RD platform to the Ravva processing plant, and produced water re-injection equipment to limit effluent discharge.

Exploration drilling on Ravva brought three oil and gas discoveries, comprising 3.6 MMboe of contingent resources. One of these finds, RB-4, encountered additional oil sands that were later put on stream at 500 b/d through the Ravva facilities.

Data acquired during this campaign allied to reservoir pressure indicators suggested there could be bypassed oil: subsurface studies are under way to identify any additional reserves.

05/28/2009