Mubadala comes up dry at Manora

No significant hydrocarbon shows were encountered at Mubadala Petroleum’s first of three exploration wells at the G1/48 Manora oil field located in the Northern Gulf of Thailand. 

Mubadala is the operator of the G1/48 license and Tap Oil is its partner with a 30% working interest.

Manora JV partners approved a three-well exploration drilling program, plus a contingent appraisal sidetrack well, at the G1/48 at the end of October 2019. The exploration wells, in order of drilling are Inthanin-1, Yothaka East-1, and Krissana-1.

The partners kicked off the three-well campaign with the Inthanin-1 exploration well earlier in November.

According to Tap Oil’s statement from earlier this week, the Inthanin-1 well spudded on November 20, 2019, and reached a total depth of 2528m on November 24, 2019.

Target objectives in the well were intersected within 15m of pre-drill prognosed depths however no significant shows were encountered while drilling and evaluation of log data indicates no zones of interest in the well. While evaluation of the well results and reasons for the lack of hydrocarbons is ongoing, it is notable that the prognosed sandstone reservoir targets in the deeper “500” and “600” sand series were very poorly developed.

Tap said that the drilling of the Inthanin-1 well was completed ahead of schedule and below budget cost. Following completion of plug and abandon operations, the Ensco 115 jack-up drilling rig will move to drill the Yothaka East-1 well.

The Yothaka East-1 surface location is 6 km SE of the Manora platform. The well is expected to spud on Friday, November 29, 2019. This well will test an independent structure to the Inthanin feature in an expected separate sand fairway.

The Yothaka East-1 will be followed by the Krissana-1 exploration well.