Offshore staff
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – PA Resources (PAR) has discovered oil in Miocene sandstones in the Lille John prospect in the Danish North Sea.
To date the well in License 12/06 has encountered around 5 m (16.4 ft) of hydrocarbon pay in a 25-m (82-ft) thick Miocene sandstone/shale interval, at a depth of 900 m (2,953 ft) below mean sea level.
Initial analysis of logs and samples suggest a sweet, light oil (34-35 deg API) with a gas:oil ratio of 350 cf/bbl, with no water.
The Lille John well location is 17 km (10.6 mi) south of the producing Gorm field and 8 km (4.9 mi) from PAR’s Broder Tuck gas-condensate discovery.
According to the company, the Miocene sandstones in Lille John are well-imaged on seismic data as an extensive seismic amplitude anomaly. Pre-drill, this was interpreted to reflect gas or oil in a sandstone reservoir.
The well was originally drilled to access a primary Chalk target, but it was unable to penetrate either this or the underlying Mid-Jurassic secondary target due to an unexpected pore pressure regime and extensive fracturing at Chalk level.
As a result, the well is being sidetracked to a revised location with the aim once more to penetrate the Chalk target and establish its fluid content and reservoir development.
Bo Askvik, President and CEO of PAR, said: “We are as operator very pleased to have made this discovery of high quality oil, especially at such a shallow reservoir depth. The seismic imaging of the Miocene clearly reveals the distribution of the oil-bearing reservoir and shows additional prospectivity at the Miocene level elsewhere within License 12/06.
“This is a very encouraging result at a stratigraphic level which has not generally been explored in Denmark.”
10/18/2011
