COPL confident of meeting Nigeria drilling deadline

Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (COPL) is still working on securing funds for an appraisal and development program in Nigeria.

In an update on Wednesday, COPL said that it continued to make “encouraging progress” towards securing funds for its “highly attractive” appraisal and development project at OPL 226, offshore Nigeria.

The OPL 226 license is located in the Niger Delta province, offshore Nigeria, and has an area of 1530 sq. km and is located in water depths ranging from 40 to 80 m.

COPL bought 80 percent of the share capital of Essar Nigeria back in September 2016. With it, COPL bought Essar’s sole asset, a 100% interest and operatorship of OPL 226 located 50km offshore in the central area of the Niger Delta.

The acquisition was made through COPL’s 50 percent owned affiliate, Shoreline Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (ShoreCan).

“The Company remains confident that it will meet the target to drill an appraisal well in late 2017 or early 2018 with a subsequent Early Production Scheme being put in place shortly after,” COPL said.

Historically, only five wells have been drilled on OPL 226 by previous operators including: Noa-1 drilled by Solgas in 2001 was an oil and gas discovery; Oyoma-1 (1972) was an oil and gas discovery; Dubagbene-1 (1972) was an oil discovery; Nduri-1 (1973) was a gas discovery; and HJ South-1 (1987) was a gas discovery.

Arthur Millholland, President & CEO, said: “At present we remain focused on developing our highly attractive oil appraisal and development project in OPL 226, offshore Nigeria. The initial work program will be to drill an appraisal well at the NOA-1 oil discovery and bring it into production through an Early Production Scheme. The drilling of up to three additional similar wells on the NOA Structure would follow on from this. This phase of the project would precede a full field development.

“COFARCO SAS of Paris, France, and Zeus Capital of London, the two Investment Banks we are engaged with, specialize in project financing of African energy ventures and we have great confidence that they will secure the necessary funding. We look forward to updating the market upon completion of the financing phase of the process.

The Noa-1 discovery well, drilled in 2001, encountered fine to medium-grained sandstones of the Agbada Formation in the footwall block that is trapped by a counter-regional (antithetic) fault. The Noa-1 discovery well encountered a thick sand in the 6100’ stratigraphic zone that has 7.0 m of gas net pay and 18.7 m of oil net pay. Three additional gas-bearing sands (3600’, 4900’, 5500’ sands) were also encountered (uphole) in the Noa- 1 well.

Offshore Energy Today Staff