Offshore staff
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Delek Drilling and partner Avner Oil & Gas Exploration have issued a statement concerning results from a 3D survey by operator Noble Energy Mediterranean over various licenses offshore Israel.
Noble presented its preliminary findings to the partnership in February concerning the licenses “Amit”, “Rachel”, parts of the “Hannah”, “David” and “Eran” (since re-named “Ratio Yam”) licenses, and the “Alon A” and “Alon B” permits.
Initially, Noble focused on processing and interpretation of seismic covering the Leviathan prospect in the Rachel and Amit licenses, which lies in tertiary sand layers corresponding to the reservoir sands identified in last year’s Tamar deepwater gas discovery in the Levantine basin.
Noble estimates gross mean recoverable gas from Leviathan at around 16 tcf (453 bcm), and the probability of geologic success at 50%. In light of this, Noble intends to recommend drilling of an exploration well starting late 2010.
Additionally, Noble has identified further tertiary prospects on the Ratio Yam licenses with an un-risked gross mean resource estimated at around 3 tcf (85 bcm).
Noble also told the partnership that based on 2D/3D data, it had identified more tertiary prospects in other jointly held licenses, including in the area of block 12 in Cyprus. The un-risked gross mean resource potential of all these various prospects totals over 30 tcf (850 bcm).
Noble added that it had started to examine the potential of additional layers of pre-Miocene age, much deeper than the Tertiary sand layers, in the partnership’s various licenses (including the Tamar and Dalit), which may hold further potential for oil and gas.
As for Tamar, engineering consultant Netherland, Sewell, and Associates Inc. (NSAI) has issued an update on the field’s natural gas reserves, based on analysis of cores extracted from the Tamar 2 well. NSAI puts the field’s proved + probable reserves at 8.7 tcf (247 bcm), a 13% increase on the previous estimate of 7.7 tcf (218 bcm). Proved reserves are now assessed at 6.5 tcf (184 bcm), an 8% increase on the prior estimate.
Noble’s recent review of production and reservoir pressure history at the near-shore Mari-B field has led it to upgrade gas resources here by 50-100 bcf (1.4-2.8 bcm). NSAI is also reviewing this assessment.
06/04/2010
