Murphy spins drill bit offshore Cameroon

Murphy Cameroon Ntem Oil Co. Ltd (“Murphy”), has started drilling operations on the Bamboo-1 well using the Ocean Confidence, a fifth generation semi-submersible drilling rig.

The news has been reported by Sterling Energy Plc, a partner in the field. The well, located approximately 56 kilometres from the coast of Cameroon, has an estimated target depth of 4200 metres true vertical depth sub-sea (TVDSS) and will be drilled in a water depth of approximately 1600 metres. Drilling operations are anticipated to take approximately 60-70 days.

Sterling Cameroon Limited (“Sterling”) has a 50% non-operated working interest in the Ntem Concession. Murphy will pay Sterling’s share of the costs for the drilling of the Bamboo-1 well.

The Bamboo prospect is a basin floor fan target within the highly prospective Upper Cretaceous play. A series of stacked fan targets have been identified and will be intersected by the Bamboo-1 well with the primary objective estimated to have a mean un-risked, gross prospective resource of 422 million barrels of oil and 170 billion cubic feet of gas, a total of some 450 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Sterling Energy Plc.’s Executive Chairman, Alastair Beardsall, said: “We are very pleased that we have commenced the drilling of an exploration well on the highly prospective Ntem Concession.”