Offshore staff
PORT STANLEY, Falkland Islands -- Desire Petroleum has suffered further disappointment in its exploration drilling campaign in the offshore North Falkland basin.
Initial indications from the 14/15-2 Rachel North well last week suggested a potential oil discovery. But following analysis of additional wireline data, the well is being P&A’d with oil shows.
The well encountered a 349-m (1,145-ft) gross interval of sands and shales with hydrocarbons, but sampling of the main sand revealed that the hydrocarbons are residual and that the mobile fluid is water.
Desire says analysis of the formation water recovered by sampling indicates much lower salinity than anticipated, and a revised log interpretation confirmed that the sands are water-bearing.
Formation pressures and sampling confirmed the presence of good reservoir quality in the upper sands, and a deeper target is still interpreted to be oil bearing, but the interval is thin and the reservoir quality poor.
According to Desire, the wells drilled to date in the Rachel area have identified five fan systems of varying areal extent and reservoir properties. Some of the sands are of a similar age to those identified earlier this year by Rockhopper’s Sea Lion oil find.
All the fans will be remapped, incorporating data from the wells to identify areas with better quality reservoir and stratigraphic traps developed. However, as the fans can only be mapped on 3D seismic, this exercise will have to wait until a forthcoming 3D data acquisition program in the North Falkand basin is completed.
Desire’s next drilling target will be the Dawn/Jacinta prospect in Tranche I, targeting sands at various levels. The well is designed to explore prospectivity on the southern margin of the basin immediately updip from the main oil source rock.
Chairman Stephen Phipps said: “Despite this setback, the presence of hydrocarbons and good reservoir development have been identified in a number of the Rachel fan sands and we therefore continue to believe in the prospectivity of the East Flank Play fairway for future oil discoveries.”
12/06/2010
