No joy for Tullow in Mauritania and Angola
ISEQ-listed Tullow Oil has released an update on its wells ahead of January’s trading statement.
Drilling on the Faucon-1 exploration well off the coast Mauritania has been completed.
The well reached a total depth of 4,170 metres and encountered a total of 96.5m of potential reservoir, of which the upper 14m is hydrocarbon-bearing.
The hydrocarbon fluid composition will not be finally determined until the downhole pressurised fluid samples recovered from the well have been fully analysed in an onshore laboratory in January.
The well will now be plugged and abandoned.
Chief executive Aidan Heavey said: “Although we believe the Faucon well is most unlikely to lead to a commercial development, it significantly upgrades the prospectivity of Tullow’s regional position in Mauritania and Senegal, where further work is planned for 2006.”
A two-well exploration programme off the coast of Angola has concluded, with both wells being plugged and abandoned.
The Ngueve-1 well was spudded on November 3 and intersected all of the planned objectives before reaching a total depth of 2,830m.
Wireline logs indicated that all the porous zones encountered by the borehole are water-bearing and the well was plugged and abandoned on November 30.
The second well, Henda-1, commenced on December 5 and was drilled to a total depth of 1,539m.
Although the main objective was intersected, no liquid hydrocarbons were encountered.
The well was therefore plugged and abandoned on December 15.
The Angolan block is largely unexplored and covers some 4,800 square kilometres.
Although the wells did not encounter commercial hydrocarbons, the company says that they provided key geological and geophysical information that will be integrated with the 3D seismic data to allow further evaluation of the region.
