Canadian independent WesternZagros has announced a major upgrade to its oil reserves in the Kurdish region of Iraq after an independent audit at its Kurdamir exploration site.
The company has unveiled its mean estimate of gross unrisked contingent resources has increased to 147 million barrels of recoverable oil (corresponding to 464 million barrels of mean estimated gross discovered oil initially in place) and the mean estimate of gross unrisked prospective resources has increased to 1.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil (corresponding to 3.6 billion barrels of mean estimated gross undiscovered oil initially in place) for the Oligocene reservoir in the Kurdamir Block.
These results follow the major oil discovery at the Kurdamir-2 exploration well in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The significant increase in both Mean Contingent and Prospective Resources is due to the fact that Kurdamir-2 encountered a 118 meter light oil column with no indications of a water leg at the Kurdamir-2 location, proving that the oil leg in the Oligocene reservoir on the flank of the Kurdamir structure is involved in a much larger trap than was previously interpreted.
The updated resource estimates are confirmed in an independent audit carried out by Sproule International.
“We are delighted with these results as we have found what this company was created to find, and the reason we entered Kurdistan,” said Simon Hatfield, WesternZagros’s Chief Executive Officer. “The Kurdamir structure is proving to be one of the top oil discoveries of the decade and this is a company maker for us. The oil reservoir of the Kurdamir structure extends further than the area previously assessed and we have not yet found its limits. In addition there is still more news to come on this well as we drill deeper into the Eocene and Cretaceous reservoirs and conduct further testing of the Oligocene oil leg in the coming months.”
