Offshore staff
LONDON -- Cameroon’s government has reached agreement with Tower Resources on further measures to support the production-sharing contract for the shallow-water Thali block in the Rio del Rey basin, which includes the Njonji oil discovery.
Following meetings last week in Douala with the Cameroon Ministry of Mines, Industry & Technological Development and the Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH), all parties have adopted the following resolutions:
* To reprocess existing 3D seismic and undertake studies such as attribute analysis, including AVO and pore pressure prediction and coherency cubes on the data
* To continue geological and geophysical interpretations, using the reprocessed data, to high-grade drillable prospects
* To pursue suitable rigs with appropriate technical specifications.
Tower will then provide SNH with a prospect inventory and detail its priorities during 2Q 2018, and both will determine a location for the first new well on the block.
The budget has been set for the planned work activities this year and in 2018, and all sides will meet again in six months to evaluate progress. This may lead to an extension of the initial period of the exploration phase to allow all contractual obligations to be fulfilled.
Jeremy Asher, Tower’s chairman and CEO, said: “By deferring the acquisition of new 3D data in favor of reprocessing existing 3D data we can save time and money in the near term, and move faster towards sourcing a rig in the currently depressed rig market.
“This not only accelerates our progress towards a well, but also makes the cost of our work program over the coming year much more affordable… With contingent oil-in-place estimated at 39 MMbbl already discovered on the block, we are keen to take advantage of the low cost of rigs in the current market and to begin drilling to reach a commercial scale for development of this high-quality near-field block as soon as possible.”
The Thali PSC covers an area of 119.2 sq km (46 sq mi) in water depths ranging from 8-48 m (26-157 ft) in the eastern part of the Niger Delta. The block is thought to hold up to four distinct play systems, including the established play that led to three discovery wells, one gas (Rumpi-1), one oil and gas (Njonji-2) and one oil (Njonji-1).
All three are at present sub-commercial, but Tower believes that improved seismic imaging could add incremental oil reserves to achieve commerciality. There could also be prospects at deeper levels, in both structural and stratigraphic traps, again to be determined by imaging.
10/10/2017
