Noble Energy will resume exploratory drilling in the Falkland Islands next year after acquiring and reviewing extensive 3D seismic of its 10 million acre-position.
In late February 2014, London-based joint venture partner Falkland Oil and Gas said that a total of 5747sq km of full-fold seismic data have been acquired over the Cretaceous Hersilia Fan complex, targeting a number of prospects and leads including Hersilia, West Hersilia and Challenger. The data was processed by PGS. Between the three sweeps, the joint venture acquired 12,000sq km of high-quality 3D seismic data.
In its announcement, Noble Energy named a new prospect: Humpback, within the Fitzroy sub-basin of the Southern Area license. The Houston company characterized it as “one of multiple stacked fan prospects clustered together in the sub-basin.”
The combined packet of prospects has an estimated gross unrisked resource potential of around 1 billion boe.
Noble’s decisio
n to return to the islands confirms earlier reports that it would resume drilling in 2015, when the company was focusing on the Diomedea area, which includes Humpback, among others.
In June, Ocean Rig announced a 260-day contract for its Eirik Raude drilling rig scheduled to begin off the Falkland Islands 1Q 2015.
Scotia non-commerical
The company also deemed its Scotia well non-commercial, forcing the Houston independent explorer to adjust its 3Q guidance to account for the sizeable hit.
“Noble Energy has updated its guidance for 3Q 2014 exploration expense to between US$230 and $240 million, including approximately $75 million related to the Scotia well decision,” Noble Energy said in a statement.
The Leiv Eiriksson drilled the Scotia well down to 5555m in 2012. FOGL said at the time that it was targeting a mid-Cretaceous fan play with more than 1 billion bbl of prospective resources, noting that “the Scotia well has proven a working hydrocarbon system” within that play.
“The wireline logs indicate that, at this location within Scotia, the sandstones form fairly poor quality reservoir, although some zones have up to 20% porosity,” FOGL said in a 27 November 2012 statement. “Other thin hydrocarbon bearing sandstones were encountered beneath the main target in the interval 4900m to 5164m. Subsequent evaluation of the main interval using a wireline formation testing tool did not flow hydrocarbons, indicating that the reservoir has low permeability.”
FOGL continued by noting that further technical work was required to assess how representative the results were and if better reservoirs were located within the well.
In Noble Energy’s statement, the company noted that the drilling operations were based on 2D seismic.
On 6 August 2012, Noble Energy entered an agreement with FOGL to farm in as operator for some parts of the Northern Area licenses. It also farmed in to the Southern Area licenses Edison International is the remaining partner of the joint venture.
With the exception of the two excluded area in the Northern Area Licenses: Noble Energy holds the operatorship with 35%. FOGL holds 40%, and Edison holds 25%. FOGL operates the Southern Area Licenses with 52.5%. Noble Energy holds 35% and Edison holds 12.5%.
Image of Eirik Raude from Ocean Rig.
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