By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 23 -- Reservoir quality appears to be poor at an apparent giant gas-condensate discovery off northernmost Namibia.
Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy released a statement saying that the Kunene-1 exploratory well in the Namibe basin “could contain a potential gas resource of up to 14 tcf.”
Sintezneftegaz of Moscow operated the well, and a Moscow subsidiary of Schlumberger Ltd. that ran the tests and analyzed the results attributed the resource to an interval at 4,698-4,748 m, the ministry said. TD is 5,052 m.
The only public company that participated in the well elected not to participate in the tests. EnerGulf Resources Inc., Vancouver, BC, with 10% interest in Block 1711, said it did not receive a copy of the Schlumberger unit’s report and has not verified the potential resource. EnerGulf said the resource “may not be compliant with NI 51-101.”
EnerGulf said the joint operating agreement allows it to reinstate its pro-rata rights in a commercial discovery in the interval that was tested by paying twice its share of the test’s costs. The company had previously said the well, the first on the block, demonstrated the presence of hydrocarbons but probably will not be a commercial producer (OGJ, Aug. 18, 2008, p. 46).
Other interests in the block are Sintezneftegaz 70%, PetroSA 10%, and Namibia’s state Namcor 7% carried.
Vanco Energy Co., Houston, originally shot 2,000 km of 2D seismic and 685 sq km of 3D seismic on the block before relinquishing its interests.
The ministry said, “Seismic reinterpretation and reprocessing over the Kunene and Hartman prospects have demonstrated that both these structures can be correlated with the Apto-Albian sediments of the South West African margin.”
The ministry said, “There were gas shows in the Albian and Aptian sediments, confirmed by wireline logging. It was not possible to fully evaluate the hydrocarbon potential of the penetrated section due to operational problems during testing. However, seismic interpretation suggests that alteration of the sediments by igneous activity may be localized to an area near the borehole, and therefore both the tested zones and some untested zones have great potential.”
EnerGulf said it looks forward to continuing the exploration program on the remote block, 800 miles northwest of Kudu gas field and several hundred miles south of production off Angola.
