With the second discovery offshore Liberia within a year, Australian minnow African Petroleum is pointing a torch at the country as the likely next big thing in the West African transform margin, after Ghana.
AP makes three claims about the well, located in the same Block 09 as the last discovery, that are geologically significant:
- The Bee Eater-1, stepping out as far as 9.5km west of the original Narina-1 (February 2012) discovery, encountered 48metres of Narina equivalent oil bearing Turonian sandstone out of a 135 metre oil interval. The extension of the Turonian oil play from the Narina-1 discovery towards Bee Eater-1 is a major achievement in determining the oil-bearing part of the 300sq kmTuronian fan.
- The well encountered 14 metres of Albian oil bearing sandstone in the Darter prospect, which extends over 200sq km. The well encountered oil bearing sandstone.downdip from the crest of the structure, indicating a potentially large oil column of 800 metres above the well location.
- The well also encountered a thin oil bearing Cenomanian sandstone of 9metres at the crest of a pinch out edge of the 60sq km Egret prospect. No water was found in this sandstone and the results indicate substantial oil potential in the Egret prospect as the Cenomanian sandstone thickens into the basin.
The only snag is that reservoir permeabilities in these oil zones were lower than prognosed, and the company is investigating it.
These results, overall, challenge recent misgivings about the success rate of exploration wells, as well as sizes of discoveries, by other operators in deepwater Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia, countries whose cretaceous sequence constitute the West African Transform margin.
Bee-Eater 1 was drilled to 4,100 metres Total Depth in 1,067 metres of water.
