Karoon takes Stena drillship for Peru well

Australia-based Karoon Energy has executed binding agreements with drilling contractor Stena Drilling and oil company Tullow Oil to contract the Stena Forth drillship for Karoon’s Marina-1 exploration well located offshore Peru.

As previously reported, Karoon started tendering for a drilling rig to drill the Marina-1 well in March 2019.

The Stena Forth has been contracted to drill one well, being the Marina-1 exploration well, in Karoon’s 40% owned and operated Block Z-38 in the Tumbes Basin in Peru with drilling scheduled to start early in the first quarter 2020, Karoon said on Friday.

The Marina-1 well sits in water depth of approximately 350 metres and is targeting a gross prospective resource of 256 million barrels (102 million barrels net to Karoon).

Karoon said that, in the case of success in Marina-1, there is potential for a de-risking of a list of additional prospects in the block totaling over a billion barrels of prospective resource on a gross basis.

The drillship assignment agreement provides Karoon with a single well slot from the existing rig contract between Tullow and Stena. The drillship has already drilled two wells for Tullow offshore Guyana.

Karoon Managing Director, Robert Hosking, commented: “The contracting of the “Stena Forth” for the exploration of the Marina Prospect is an exciting opportunity for Karoon. Karoon has been working for some time to assess the prospectivity of the block, attract a farmout partner and prepare for drilling. The drilling of Marina-1 is a critical milestone for assessing the prospectivity of the deeper waters off northern Peru, and, on success, could de-risk several further exploration targets within Block Z-38, and Karoon’s 100% owned Area 73 Technical Evaluation Area, potentially providing important future production for Peru.

“The “Stena Forth” Drillship is a recently delivered harsh water drillship with capabilities to drill in far deeper water depths and much harsher sea states than those found in Northern Peru, Karoon is happy to have secured the use of such a high quality vessel for this well.”

The Marina exploration Prospect is a large fault bounded structure located in the Tumbes Basin with prospective reservoirs at multiple levels from 900 metres subsea down to 2900 metres subsea. Gross Prospective Resources in the Marina Prospect are estimated at 256 million barrels. Planned total depth of the well is 3026 metres.

According to Karoon, the Marina-1 will be the first well drilled in Z-38 and as such will be an important calibration point for the petroleum geology of the block. The information derived from the well will be valuable in assessing the other prospects and leads in Z-38, with over a billion barrels in gross prospective resources, and in the 100% owned Technical Evaluation Area 73.

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