Kosmos Energy’s Transform margin experiment is being severely tested. The American junior just plugged and abandoned a second dry hole in deepwater Mauritania, less than three months after the first.
Like Hippocampe-1 before it, the Lamantin-1 well encountered water in the reservoirs prognosed to be oil bearing.
Although Kosmos has proven several gas accumulations, including the large sized Tortue field in the region, the current campaign is to find oil outboard of the gas tanks.
The Lamantin-1 exploration well is located in Block C-12 offshore Mauritania in approximately 2,200 meters of water. Hippocampe-1 was drilled in approximately 2,600 meters of water in Block C-8.
Both were designed to test Lower Cenomanian reservoirs, trapped in a combination structural-stratigraphic feature, and charged from underlying, oil-prone Cenomanian/Turonian and Albian source rocks.
In essence, large, out – board basin floor fan reservoirs trapped primarily stratigraphically, potentially charged vertically with oil / liquids.
Instead, the wells “encountered well-developed reservoirs in both exploration targets but these proved to be water bearing”.
“We are still in the early stages of exploring this newly emerging basin and our forward drilling program remains unchanged given the independent nature of the prospects”, said Andrew G. Inglis, chairman and chief executive officer.
“The drillship will now proceed as planned to test the independent Requin Tigre prospect offshore Senegal, which will be followed by two high-impact oil tests offshore Suriname in mid-2018.”
The Requin Tigre prospect is a Cenomanian/Albian base of slope fan supplied from the proven Senegal River system, and is located approximately 150 kilometres offshore, 60 kilometres west of the Tortue discovery, and 80 kilommetres north of the Yakaar discovery in approximately 3,100 metres of water. It is estimated that drilling will take approximately sixty days.
Kosmos holds rights in the C-6, C-8, C-12, C-13, and C-18 contract areas under production sharing contracts with the Government of Mauritania’s Société Mauritanienne Des Hydrocarbures et de PatrimoineMinier (SMHPM). The blocks range in water depth between 100 and 3,000 meters, and have combined acreage of over 40,000 square kilometers gross. Kosmos is the exploration operator
