Conrad Petroleum’s Tambak drilling a success

Conrad Petroleum has recovered “extensive fluid and gas samples“ from its Tambak-1 well at its operated Duyung Production Sharing Contract (PSC) in the West Natuna Basin, offshore Indonesia, its partner Empyrean Energy has informed.

The Tambak-1, located approximately 4.5 km north of the Mako South-1 well, has been drilled to an intermediate depth of 1,683 feet true vertical depth sub-sea (“TVDSS”) using COSL’s  Asian Endeavour-1 rig.

“The well has intersected the intra-Muda reservoir of the Mako field and a full suite of wireline logs have been acquired together with a pressure survey and extensive fluid and gas samples recovered. These data have established the well as a successful appraisal of the Mako gas field and confirm the large, areally extensive single tank model for the field,” Empyrean said on Wednesday.

The Tambak-1 well, spudded around two weeks ago, is designed as both an appraisal of the northeast flank of the Mako gas field as well as an exploration test of the Tambak prospect.

An independent review by Gaffney Cline & Associates had previously ascribed gross 2C resources of 276 Bcf (48.78 MMboe) of recoverable dry gas in the Mako field with gross 3C resources of 392 Bcf (69.3 MMboe) representing additional field upside, but the Tambak results might boost the estimated resources further.

“The results of the successful appraisal drilling in both Tambak-1 and -2 provide significant volumetric upside potential for the field, representing a very significant value addition,” Empyrean said.

Well drilling continues

As a next step, Empyrean said, the well will be drilled to a total depth of approximately 4,495 feet TVDSS in order to test the potential of the deeper Tambak prospect.

Tambak is estimated as having a mid-case prospective resource potential of 250 Bcf and a geological chance of success of 45%. The Tambak-1 well is planned to be plugged and abandoned once operations are complete.

The gross cost of the two well program is expected to be approximately $17MM-19MM to the PSC partners on a fully tested basis, including rig mobilization and demobilization, for which Coro Energy Plc (“Coro”) is funding US$10.5MM. Empyrean will fund 8.5% of the additional drilling campaign costs over and above the Coro funding.

Tom Kelly, Empyrean CEO commented,:”The successful appraisal of the Mako gas discovery (intra-Muda sands) to date has clearly added significant confidence in the resource and has created value that is normally only achieved through additional exploration. Any subsequent success at the deeper Tambak exploration prospect will add further value to an already successful drilling campaign”.