Offshore staff

OSLO, Norway -- Drilling of the Kora prospect off northwest Africa should start next month, according to Rocksource. The spud date has been delayed due to extended operations on the rig’s prior wells.

Kora is the largest exploration target in the AGC Profond offshore block, which covers an area of 9,838 sq km (3,798 sq mi) along the Sénégal/Guinea Bissau border, with water depths ranging from 50-3,500 m (164-11,483 ft).

Ophir Energy operates the production-sharing contract, in partnership with L’Entreprise AGC and Rocksource. The concession is governed by the Agence de Gestion et de Coopération entre le Guinée Bissau et le Sénégal (AGC), a joint commission administering the maritime zone between the two countries.

To date, 16 prospects have been mapped on the block, with potential un-risked resources around 1.7 Bboe. Four of the prospects have been covered by controlled source electromagnetic data acquisition – processing and interpretation revealed strong positive EM anomalies in three of the structures.

Rocksource estimates the Kora prospect’s mean recoverable resources at around 450 MMboe, with a chance of success greater than 50%. This is a large toe-thrust structure, containing a series of stacked deep-water reservoir targets.

If a discovery results, there will likely be follow-up exploration activity on the block in 2012.

05/13/2011