All articles in the Oilpatch Sahara Section:

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

SDX Energy expects to announce the drilling results of KSR-14 in mid-October. The probe is the first of a nine well drilling programme on the Company’s Sebou, Gharb Centre and Lalla Mimouna permits in Morocco.
KSR-14 is a development well and it is located on the Sebou permit.
“On success, the well will be completed, flow tested and connected to the existing infrastructure. These activities are anticipated to be carried out within 30 days of the drilling rig departing the location”, SDX officials say.
The nine well drilling campaign on three permits follows extensive technical work from which the optimal drilling locations were identified, SDX claims. The London headquartered, Toronto and AIM listed explorer is targeting an increase in its local gas sales volumes in Morocco by up to 50% and an increase in its reserves by more than 100% through this drilling campaign.

By Fred Akanni, Editor

Results of the SNE North-1, Cairn Energy’s most recent probe offshore Senegal, are better than what came out of the FAN South-1 exploration well drilled just slightly earlier.

But the preliminary analysis of the hydrocarbon footage suggests that the reservoirs are not as developed as the equivalent encountered in offset wells SNE 1 and 2.

What is encountered in the primary objective is not oil, but condensate, of 11 metre net thickness. Only four metres of oil was identified in the secondary objective, which had not been probed anywhere else in the sequence and as such could be an upside. “The well encountered oil in the deeper secondary objective, in a separate accumulation to the SNE field”, Cairn says in their release.

The entire gross hydrocarbon interval is however 24 metres thick, which is quite thin compared with 97 metre (average) gross hydrocarbon interval encountered in the same sequence in SNE 1 and 2.

If these are the same reservoirs, as in SNE 1 and SNE 2, then SNE North 1 is not adding any much volume to what’s already documented. If they are not the same reservoirs, however, the fact that they are thinner reservoirs does not preclude them for being better gushers than thicker reservoirs encountered in the offset wells.

SNE North-1 is being plugged and abandoned and the Stena DrillMAX rig will be released.

Cairn is trying to sound optimistic about this result, the second consecutive not-so-great result in the Senegal campaign. “Further work is being undertaken to establish the potential commerciality of this discovery and to integrate the results with the block wide data gathered to date”, the company says. “The well result has positive implications for further hydrocarbon potential to the north of the structural trend containing the SNE field and SNE North-1 discovery well, as well as for broader exploration potential in the permit.

SNE North-1 is located in ~900 metres (m) water depth, ~ 90 kilometres offshore in the Sangomar Deep Offshore block and ~15km north of the SNE-1 discovery. The well reached a Total Depth (TD) of 2,837m. Operations have again been safely and successfully completed ahead of schedule and under budget, following drilling and logging.

“A full set of oil, water and gas samples was recovered to the surface. After completing conventional logging, a series of Modular Formation Dynamic Testing (MDT) mini-fracs were obtained across the reservoir section to help calibrate the geo- mechanical model of the SNE field and aid development well design.

“This marks the end of the five well 2017 drilling campaign”, Cairn says. The operator and its partners are reviewing the potential for further exploration drilling operations in 2018, within the Rufisque, Sangomar and Sangomar Deep Production Sharing Contract area.

By Sully Manope, in Dakar

Cairn Energy has failed to find a commercial pool of hydrocarbon in the deeper, older reservoirs below the play it encountered in its 2014 discovery of the SNE field in Senegal.

The VR-1 well was loudly applauded in the media as a bigger success than most of the five appraisals of the SNE-1 discovery.” It is a significant step out, some 5 km west from the line of wells drilled to date, including the SNE-1 discovery”, Cairn says. “The results will be useful for the planning of the first phase of development – the lower 500 series reservoirs are the better connected, more tabular, highly productive sands, where water-flooding should yield recovery factors of 30% or more”. 
But while VR-1 was primarily meant to evaluate the 500 series reservoirs already confirmed elsewhere, its secondary objective was to test the carbonates below those sands.

“The deeper carbonate exploration targets were encountered as expected with indications of hydrocarbons at the base of the well in tight formation that is not currently viewed as commercial”, the company says in a release. 
A significant amount of new stratigraphic and log data has been recorded which will be incorporated into the regional geological model” Still, the company is encouraged that the appraisal results from VR-1 are very encouraging, as the well result confirms the predictability of the mapped reservoir over a wide area giving confidence to the reservoir engineering models”

London headquartered SDX is mobilising the Sino-Tharwa 6 drilling rig to the location of South Disouq (SD)1X, its first well in the South Disouq licence onshore.  

The Company anticipates drilling to commence at the SD-1X location by March 20, 2017.
SDX is 55% operator of the South Disouq licence, an exploration asset located onshore central Nile Delta. IPR Group of companies holds the remaining 45%.

The South Disouq concession spreads over 1,275 sq km and is estimated to contain 1.3 TCF of resource potential (P10). The concession is located within the prolific Abu Madi – Baltim trend which to date consists of 10 discoveries containing 6.3 TCF of gas and 100 MMBO of liquids.

The company also has a working interest in two producing properties (50% North West Gemsa & 50% Meseda) located onshore in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, adjacent to the Gulf of Suez.