Offshore staff
LONDON – Borders & Southern (B&S) remains hopeful of securing a farm-out of its offshore acreage in the South Falkland basin, following the recent oil price recovery.
Many of the large and mid-sized companies that have been cutting costs and strengthening their balance sheets are now considering growth ventures again, and B&S hopes this will allow it to finally move forward with appraisal drilling on itsDarwin gas/condensate discovery.
Last year’s facilities engineering studies and reservoir modeling suggested a break-even oil price of $40/bbl for an initial 270-MMbbl FPSO, phased development.
More detailed engineering work could reduce the break-even price further, B&S claims, with the attractive economics due to the Falkland Islands government’s fiscal terms and the need for only a limited number of development wells in the laterally continuous, good-quality reservoir.
Of other prospects identified nearby, the largest and most likely candidate for an exploration well (following appraisal of Darwin) isSulivan.
This prospect, defined by a strong seismic amplitude anomaly measuring 120 sq km (46 sq mi), is stratigraphically older than the Darwin reservoir, in a section not yet penetrated by a well, and the AVO response is very similar to that associated with the Darwin discovery.
If this anomaly does represent another gas condensate accumulation, B&S assesses potential in-place resources as 5.6 tcf of gas with 473 MMbbl of recoverable condensate.
04/03/2017
