Gulf Keystone Petroleum, a Iraqi Kurdistan-focused independent beloved of private investors on London’s AIM market, announced on Friday that it has has spun the bit at its Sheikh Adi-2 exploration well.
Sheikh Adi-2, the second exploration well on the block, is being drilled 1.45 km to the north of the Sheikh Adi-1 exploration well, which was drilled to a total depth of 3,800 metres in August 2011.
Based on the Sheikh Adi-1 well log results from the Cretaceous, Jurassic and the upper Triassic formations, gross oil-in-place resources of 1 billion to 3 billion barrels (P90 to P10 estimates) with a mean estimate of 1.9 billion barrels were assigned to the western part of the Sheikh Adi field by Dynamic Global Advisors (DGA), the independent Houston-based exploration consultants.
Sheikh Adi-2 will target prospective intervals in the Jurassic formation and has a planned TD of approximately 2,450 metres. The well is being drilled in the northern part of the Sheikh Adi structure with the Discoverer-4 rig, which had previously drilled the Shaikan-4 appraisal well.
Based on detailed analysis of 215 km² of 3D data, which was fully processed in November 2011, this part of the structure appears to be more tightly folded and therefore the Board believes that it is more likely to have a well-developed system of natural fractures.
Gulf Keystone is the Operator of the Sheikh Adi block with an 80 per cent working interest, while the Kurdistan Regional Government has a 20 per cent carried interest.
GKP COO said:
“Sheikh Adi-2 is a significant addition to our extremely active 2012/2013 drilling programme in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. To date, we have completed or are currently drilling 13 exploration and appraisal wells across the four blocks in the region in which we have interest”
The Sheikh Adi block is located immediately to the west of the Company’s Shaikan block, a major discovery which DGA rated as holding 10.5 billion barrels of P5 reserves.
