Pancontinental Oil and Gas NL (“Pancontinental”) announced that the Sunbird-1 well operated by BG Group (“Operator”), using the drillship Deepsea Metro-1, has reached a final depth of 2,850 metres below the drill floor.
The water depth is 723 metres. The top of the Sunbird Miocene Pinnacle Reef was penetrated at 1,583.7 metres subsea.
The Sunbird Miocene Reef has been found to contain a hydrocarbon column, however the vertical extent of the hydrocarbon column has not yet been determined due to the difficulty of assessing wireline logs in the upper section of the reef where there were extensive losses of drilling fluid into highly porous and permeable parts of the reservoir.
Hydrocarbon samples have been recovered for detailed analyses. The full nature of the hydrocarbons will not be known until geochemical and other analyses have been completed.
At this early stage of results interpretation, the Operator has advised Pancontinental that it is not yet in a position to properly and fully estimate the vertical extent of the hydrocarbon column, the potential volumes of hydrocarbons, or to provide an accurate assessment of the nature of the hydrocarbons; nor is it in a position to comment on whether the volumes of hydrocarbons discovered appear to be commercial or sub-commercial.
Recent and current activities include wireline logging, formation and fluid sampling and preparations for completing the well.
It is intended that Sunbird-1 will be “plugged and abandoned” in accordance with the planned drilling programme and industry best practice, meaning that the well will be made safe in such a way that it can be left permanently without further intervention. These measures are designed to ensure that there is no leakage of hydrocarbons within the well, or to the sea floor.
Pancontinental will provide further information regarding the well results and a forward work programme when the fully assessed results have been provided by the Operator in the coming weeks.
Press Release, March 17, 2014