Independent oil & gas E&P company, Sterling Energy has said that operations at its Sangaw North-1 exploration well in the Kurdistan region of Iraq have been halted following a failure of drilling equipment.
The extent of the repair work is being assessed, however an initial assessment by the company indicates the requirement for replacement parts to be imported and for specialist engineers to be brought in to complete the repairs. Sterling estimates that these repairs may take up to 21 days to complete.
Following the satisfactory completion of repairs, Sterling will resume the drill stem testing of the prospective zones identified from the well data.
The Sangaw North-1 well which spudded in the beginning of February is the first exploration well on the Sangaw North Block. Its target is several prospective Cretaceous and Jurassic aged reservoirs and has a planned depth of 3,660m.
An independent review of the Sangaw North prospect undertaken by RISC (UK) Ltd. gives a best estimate of gross prospective oil resources for the Cretaceous interval of 804 million barrels.
The well has been designed with the option to drill deeper to a total depth of 4,160m to test additional Jurassic aged reservoirs; the decision to drill this additional section will be taken based upon the drilling results.
