Circle Oil PLC, London, expressed encouragement at the results of preliminary processing of a 4,800-km airborne gravity and magnetic survey on Block 49 in southwestern Oman.
The 15,438 sq km block is on the southern edge of the Rub al Khali basin and the eastern flank of the Ghudun Salt basin. Circle Oil’s interest is 100%.
Results of the survey by Fugro Aerosurveys, Johannesburg, are to be integrated with other data to design a 2D seismic survey to start in early 2007. The block’s northern border is with Saudi Arabia.
Preliminary analysis already indicates that the eastern edge of a postulated InfraCambrian salt basin, analogous to the nearby highly oil productive South Oman Salt basin, extends into Block 49, Circle Oil said.
Circle Oil previously said the block’s two main play concepts are the Silurian Sahmah play, which it hoped extends into Block 49 from eastern Saudi Arabia, and the Lower Haima-Huqf play.
Circle Oil also noted that several billion barrels of oil have been discovered in Proterozoic-Cambrian reservoirs associated with the Ara salt in the South Oman basin southeast of Block 49, and there is evidence of the presence of a similar salt basin, named Ghudun, beneath the western part of the block.