Page 9 - LatAmOil Week 48 2019
P. 9
LatAmOil SURINAME LatAmOil
e US operator has been using a drillship, the Noble Sam Croft, to sink Maka Central-1 at Block 58. It has said it will exercise its option to drill two more wells there with the ship.
So far, the company has not spoken publicly about the results of its rst round of testing at the well. Its reticence has led some industry observ- ers to speculate that Maka Central-1 does not contain any commercial hydrocarbon reserves.
Leo Mariani, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, fell into that camp. “ ere’s no colour. Typically we’d have something like ‘We found oil’ or ‘We found gas.’ It was just incredibly thin,” he told Bloomberg.
Paul Sankey of Mizuho said he did not expect Apache to divulge much about the data gathered from the well before it reached the new target depth early next year. In the meantime, the out- look for the project will remain ambiguous, he told Bloomberg. “ is is hardly the champagne cork moment that was potentially at play here, butthenagain,noristhis rmlyadryhole.”
Block 58 lies about 7 miles (11.2km) from the
PERU/BRAZIL
maritime border separating Guyana and Suri- name. ExxonMobil (US) and other companies have found sizeable crude oil reserves on the Guyanese side of the boundary, but Suriname has not been as lucky.
Suriname’s offshore zone (Image: Staatsolie)
Karoon Energy to focus on South America
BRUCE Phillips, the chairman of Australia’s Karoon Energy, said last week that his company was taking steps to shi its focus to development projects in South America.
Speaking at the annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders, Phillips said that Karoon Energy was scaling back its involve- ment in Australia’s offshore zone in order to concentrate on its assets in Peru and Brazil. e company has already relinquished its permit for WA-314-P, a licence area o shore Western Aus- tralia, in response to its failure to nd a suitable partner for a farm-in deal, he said.
Additionally, he noted, it has started the process of relinquishing its permit for EPP46, a block that lies o shore South Australia in the Great Australian Bight region. (Karoon Energy had been due to drill a well at EPP46 by October 2021, but relinquishment would relieve it of this obligation.)
Phillips also stated that Karoon Energy had reduced sta levels in Australia while expanding its operations in Peru and Brazil, where its pros- pects are viewed as very favourable. It is using the proceeds of a recent securities issue to fund these activities, he said.
In Peru, the Australian company has a 40% stake in Block Z-38, a licence area in the o - shore Tumbes Basin. It serves as the operator of the block, which is home to the Marina pros- pect. Karoon Energy and its partners recently arranged to use the Stena Forth, a dynamic posi- tioning drillship, to sink a wildcat well at Marina in the rst quarter of 2020. e prospect may hold as much as 256mn barrels of crude oil.
e company also has a 100% stake in Area
73, a technical evaluation licence that lies to the south of Marina. If it makes a discovery at the Marina-1 wildcat well, it will be able to de-risk Area 73, as well as other sections of Block Z-38.
In Brazil, Karoon Energy has 100% stakes in three o shore elds: Baúna, Goiá and Neon, all of which lie within the southern Santos Basin. It has encountered signi cant oil shows during test drilling at Goiá and Neon and is already extracting about 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Baúna. It is using a oating pro- duction, storage and o -loading (FPSO) vessel known as the Cidade de Itajai for development work at Baúna.
`
The Australian company has a 40% stake in Block Z-38 (Image: Karoon Energy)
Week 48 05•December•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P9
