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Firstdrill Plays Key Role in the Drilling of First Deepwater Well in Namibia's Namibe Basin
Drilling in remote areas with little industry infrastructure can be a tricky and expensive operation. Take, for example, Aminex's experiences of drilling the long over-budget and overtime Nyuni-1 well in Tanzania in 2004, then the first well to drill in the country for over a decade and which proved a logistical nightmare for the London-listed firm. These challenges only grow when the operator is moving out of its comfort zone to tackle a deepwater well in a frontier region, requiring the latest technological know-how and logistical expertise in order to avoid sky high cost over-runs. In these instances, it pays to hire experienced hands to manage the drilling process.
This is where the likes of privately-owned Firstdrill Ltd play a role. The Bournemouth-based oil services group, which was founded in 1996 by a team of seasoned international oil industry veterans, has just completed a job for Russian firm Sintezneftegaz, which operates deepwater Block 1711 in the Namibe Basin off the northern coast of Namibia. While Namibia's northern neighbour Angola has a well-established and prolific offshore oil industry, despite the ravages of a bitter 26-year civil war that only ended in 2002, Namibia itself remains largely unexplored with only 15 wells drilled offshore, of which eight have targeted the stranded Kudu gas field. Indeed, Sintezneftegaz's recent well here, Kunene-1, is believed to be the first ever well drilled in the Namibe Basin south of the Angola border and is the first deepwater well on the block.
Firstdrill was employed by the Russian firm to provide wrap-around project management for the wildcat, which was drilled to a depth of more than 5,000 metres - deeper than the original planned depth of 4,400 metres, using the Deep Venture drillship in water depths of 780 metres. Firstdrill's services included well design, pre-engineering, contract and procurement services and the execution of the drilling programme through to the final well reports. It also acted as the intermediary between Sintezneftegaz and other service companies to ensure efficient and successful operations.
Hailing the success of the drilling operation, Firstdrill’s MD Peter Redman described the project as a "challenging deepwater rank exploration well in a remote location", saying the well had "provided a greater understanding of the field and prospects" on the block. One of Sintezneftegaz’s partners in the project, TSX-listed EnerGulf Resources, described the well as an "immense undertaking", highlighting the tough weather and downhole conditions that saw drilling operations run over schedule.
The well, some 60 km off the coast, was spudded in April to target a prospect with an areal extent of 82 sq km and a resource estimate ranging from 450 million barrels of oil and 445 billion cubic feet of gas in the case of oil or 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 38 million barrels of oil in the case of gas. In August it was reported the well had found "significant hydrocarbon shows" although EnerGulf said it was unlikely to be a commercial producer. Even so, the Russian operator opted to test the well, which has been classified as a "tight hole" by the Namibian government.
This has given encouragement to other operators in this exciting frontier play, among them AIM-quoted Tower Resources, which holds two offshore blocks some 200 km to the south. Tower said the apparent presence of "significant" gas was encouraging for the prospectivity of its own acreage. In May Tower reported the presence of structures with the potential to hold up to 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil. New 2D seismic will be acquired between November and March 2009 to provide more information on these structures ahead of drilling 2010, an event that will provide plenty of momentum for the Tower share price and provide further detail on the prospectivity of the little-drilled Namibian offshore.
From oilbarrel.com
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Notes to Editors:
Firstdrill Ltd is a truly independent global drilling project management company with proven international expertise. Founded in 1996, and based in the United Kingdom, the Company has provided international and domestic project management, well engineering and operational logistics to some of the World's leading oil and gas exploration companies. The Company's management team and in-house technical teams have decades of industry experience across the entire range of global project management and engineering services for the industry.
Firstdrill has dedicated skilled in-house technical expertise, allowing senior-level service and continuity of contact throughout a project. The Company is fully committed to meeting its client needs with a strong record of client cost-savings and on-time and on-cost delivery at the highest standard of environmental control. The Company has proven its global expertise through successful project management throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and beyond.
