Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. hopes to start production in late 2000 from Oseil field on Seram Island in eastern Indonesia.
Kufpec (Indonesia) Ltd. drilled appraisal wells that flowed 650 and 6,300 b/d of 22° gravity oil, respectively, from the complex, highly fractured carbonate reservoir in 1998.
The government extended the production sharing agreement for as long as 20 years from the previous expiration in November 1999. The site is 120 miles southwest of Irian Jaya and about 1,600 miles east-northeast of Jakarta.
Kufpec holds 92.5% working interest, having acquired ARCO's interests. ARCO earlier described the field as the first substantial discovery in pre-Tertiary rocks in eastern Indonesia. The reservoir is the Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic Manusela formation at about 6,700 ft.
Kufpec noted that the field is the site of the first use of underbalanced drilling technology in Southeast Asia.
Kufpec planned engineering design and crude value optimization studies this year and installation of production facilities next year.
Oseil, a 1994 discovery, would be only the second field to produce in the Bula basin. Participants are Sherritt International (Seram) Ltd. 5% and Santos Petroleum (Seram) Ltd. 2.5%.
Meanwhile, four companies launched a seismic group shoot in the Misool Island region of eastern Indonesia, just north of Seram.
Main goal of the nonexclusive 2D program is to image the Mesozoic section that occurs offshore between Misool Island and the deepwater Seram trough. The 3,000 line km program is a joint effort between TGS-Nopec, Schlumberger Geco-Prakla, Migas, and Pertamina.
TGS-Nopec acquired 6,500 km of seismic data in the area in 1998 that tied key wells in the region and provided links to a variety of geological provinces.
