Oil Bearing News

The drilling of Beacon Offshore Energy's Winterfell-2 appraisal well on Block 943 in the Green Canyon area of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico has been completed with the well showing encouraging results, Kosmos Energy, a partner in the project said Tuesday.The Winterfell-2 well, where Kosmos' working interest is ~16.4%, was drilled to evaluate the adjacent fault block to the northwest of the original Winterfell discovery and was designed to test two horizons that were oil bearing in the Winterfell-1 well…

Oil and gas major ExxonMobil on Wednesday announced two new oil discoveries offshore Guyana, at Fangtooth and Lau Lau wells, adding to previous recoverable resource estimate of 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels.The Fangtooth-1 well, drilled with the Stena DrillMAX drillship, encountered approximately 164 feet (50 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. The well was drilled in 6,030 feet (1,838 meters) of water and is located approximately 11 miles (18 kilometers) northwest of the Liza field. The Lau Lau-1 well, drilled by the Noble Don Taylor drillship, hit around 315 feet (96 meters) of high-quality hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone reservoirs.

U.S. oil major ExxonMobil has made another oil discovery at the prolific Stabroek offshore block in Guyana. This adds to around nine billion barrels of oil equivalent discovered over the past few years and paves way for future development.The discovery was made at Whiptail-1 well at the 6.6 million acres (26,800 square kilometers) offshore block. The well encountered 246 feet (75 meters) of net pay in high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. The Whiptail discovery is located approximately 4 miles southeast of the Uaru-1 discovery that was announced in January 2020 and approximately 3 miles west of the Yellowtail field. Whiptail-1 is being drilled in 5…

Spirit Energy will invest in exploration and appraisal West of Shetland for the first time early next year after farming into 50% of Hurricane Energy’s Greater Warwick Area.Spirit Energy will fund a $180 million (£139 million) campaign to drill three wells 100km West of Shetland, to further prove up the potential of an area which holds an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in prospective and contingent resources.The three wells will be drilled in licences operated by Hurricane Energy (“Hurricane”). They will target the Lincoln discovery and the Warwick exploration prospect, which are estimated to hold 604 million boe…

ExxonMobil and the Hess Corporation announced an eighth oil discovery offshore Guyana at the Longtail-1 well, creating the potential for additional resource development in the southeast area of the Stabroek Block. The companies said approximately 78 meters of high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone reservoir was encountered. The well was drilled to 5,504 meters depth in 1,940 meters of water by the Stena Carron drillship on May 25, 2018. The Longtail-1 well is located approximately 5 miles west of the Turbot-1 well and follows previous discoveries on the Stabroek Block at Liza…

Exxon Mobil Corporation announced its sixth oil discovery offshore Guyana since 2015, following positive results from its Ranger-1 exploration well. The Ranger-1 well discovery adds to previous discoveries at Liza, Payara, Snoek, Liza Deep and Turbot, which are estimated to total more than 3.2 billion recoverable oil-equivalent barrels. ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd. began drilling the Ranger-1 well on November 5, 2017 and encountered approximately 70 meters of high-quality, oil-bearing carbonate reservoir.

Shell has informed the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) that it is set to restart its controversial hunt for Arctic oil, three years after the company’s last ill-fated venture north, reports The Guardian. “Fennica, the safety vessel and icebreaker, is in the Chukchi Sea, drilling continues, and we have requested the permit to drill deeper in this exploration well,” said a spokeswoman for the company. Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell PLC has applied to amend its federal exploratory drilling permit to allow drilling into oil-bearing rock in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska's northwest coast, says AP. Shell was granted permission last month to commence some drilling at two sites in the Chukchi Sea but was prohibited from digging into petroleum zones roughly 8…

Shell’s drilling operations in the Chukchi Sea are being overseen 24/7 by inspectors from the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to ensure compliance with federal regulations and safety standards, BSEE said. BSEE said its inspector boarded the semi-submersible drilling unit Transocean Polar Pioneer before it began drilling the top section of the well at Burger J on July 30, and a second BSEE inspector is on board the drillship Noble Discoverer at Burger V, even though the Discoverer is not permitted to conduct drilling operations while the Polar Pioneer is operating.

Protestors rappelled off a bridge in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday hoping to delay Royal Dutch Shell's Arctic oil exploration this summer by blocking the return of a ship to Alaska that holds emergency equipment. Greenpeace said 13 protestors lowered themselves from the St. John's bridge in the early morning and 13 others on the traffic level of the bridge are assisting them. "Depending on the weather they can stay there for three to five days," said Cassady Sharp, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, which says Arctic drilling could be damaging to populations of whales, polar bears and walrus if there is an oil spill. The danglers have food and water and plan to sleep in hammocks suspended over the Willamette River, which provides shipping access to the Pacific Ocean from Portland.

After extensive review and under a robust array of safety requirements, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) Director Brian Salerno today announced that Shell has received conditional approval of two Applications for Permits to Drill (APD) to conduct limited exploratory drilling activities in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska. Specifically, the APDs limit Shell to drilling only the top sections of wells and prohibit Shell from drilling into oil-bearing zones. Shell currently is not permitted to drill into oil-bearing zones because, to do so, BSEE requires that a capping stack be on hand and deployable within 24 hours. A capping stack is a critical piece of emergency response equipment designed to shut in a well in the unlikely event of a loss of well control.

The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday granted Royal Dutch Shell two final permits to explore for crude in the Arctic this summer, but said the company cannot drill into the oil zone until required emergency equipment arrives in the region. The department's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) conditionally granted Shell permits for exploration in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, in a season which sea ice limits from July until October. But Shell must have emergency equipment to contain a potential blown-out well deployable within 24 hours before drilling into the oil zone…

Unlike almost all its neighbors, Guyana isn’t an oil producer yet. But the energy giant Exxon Mobil recently announced it had discovered “significant” oil off the coast. The discovery could put Guyana on oil and gas Map and the country could become a player in the oil marketplace. However, it will take months to ascertain the size and commercial potential of this discovery. And there could be issues, as the waters also claimed by Venezuela as part of a long-running border dispute between the South American countries. But oil discovery offshore Guyana is the most exciting thing happening in terms of Latin America exploration right now. On Tuesday, Exxon Mobil Corporation announced a significant oil discovery on the Stabroek Block, located approximately 120 miles offshore Guyana.

BP announced today that it is now operating the world’s first robotic coreflooding system. The Core Flood Robot is the most recent addition to BP’s programme of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) research facilities. Coreflooding is one of the most important techniques used to identify and evaluate EOR technologies. It measures the effectiveness of water or gas injected into an oil-bearing rock sample to displace oil. This can be used to assess the potential for water flooding in an oil field. “The EOR technologies being developed by BP are vitally important to help increase global oil supplies,” said Ahmed Hashmi, BP’s head of upstream technology.

Cairn has made a discovery of high quality oil in the second well in the Senegal exploration programme. The SNE-1 well is located in 1,100 metres (m) water depth and approximately 100 kilometres (km) offshore in the Sangomar Offshore block with a target depth of ~3,000 m and targeting the Shelf Edge Prospect. Intermediate logging of the SNE-1 well has confirmed hydrocarbons in the Cretaceous clastics objective which is of similar age to oil bearing sands found approximately 24 km away in FAN-1. As operator, Cairn has now issued Notices of Discovery for the SNE-1 well and FAN-1 well to the Government of Senegal on behalf of the Joint Venture. Further evaluation of this zone is continuing. The deeper target of karstified and fractured Lower Cretaceous shelf carbonates is yet to be reached.

Cairn together with its joint venture partners have announced that the FAN-1 exploration well, offshore Senegal, has discovered oil. The well, located in 1,427 metres (m) water depth and approximately 100 kilometres offshore in the Sangomar Deep block, has reached a Target Depth (TD) of 4,927 m and was targeting multiple stacked deepwater fans. As stated prior to the commencement of operations there are no plans for immediate well testing. Further evaluation will now be required to calibrate the well with the existing 3D seismic in order to determine future plans and optimal follow up locations to determine the extent of the discovered resource.

Hurricane Energy plc, the UK-based oil and gas company, announced having substantially completed post-well data analysis following the successful testing of the 1km horizontal appraisal well 205/21a-6 in Q2 2014 at the Company's Lancaster oil discovery West of Shetland. The well was optimally located to benefit from a highly connected fault/fracture network and an underlying 300m oil column (Hurricane's - 2C estimate of field ODT). The results from third party analysis combine to demonstrate a very good quality reservoir which could deliver single well rates of 20,000 STB/d - significantly ahead of initial expectations of well productivity.

Roxi, the Central Asian oil and gas company with a focus on Kazakhstan, has given an update about the market with news of the deep discovery at its flagship BNG asset. The BNG Contract Area is located in the west of Kazakhstan 40 kilometres southeast of Tengiz on the edge of the Mangistau Oblast, covering an area of 1,561 square kilometres of which 1,376 square kilometres has 3D seismic coverage acquired in 2009 and 2010. Roxi has a 58.41 per cent interest in the BNG Contract Area. On 19 August 2014 Roxi announced that the thickness of the gross oil-bearing interval commencing at 4,332 meters was at least 51 meters and that Roxi would continue to determine the full extent of the interval by drilling and logging rather than taking additional core samples.

The activists on board the Transocean Spitsbergen are now in the hands of Norwegian police. The rig was on its way for planned exploration drilling in the Hoop-area in the Barents Sea when Greenpeace activists boarded the rig in the early hours of Tuesday, 27 May. Statoil is very pleased that the illegal action on the rig now has ended without anyone being injured. The rig will now prepare for transit to the drilling site for the Apollo well in the Hoop area. Statoil has a permit to start the drilling operations, but awaits a final decision on a Greenpeace appeal to the Norwegian Ministry of climate and environment before drilling into oil-bearing layers.

On the morning of 27 May Greenpeace activists boarded the drilling rig Transocean Spitsbergen. The rig was en route to the Hoop area in the Barents Sea. On Monday Statoil got approval from the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment to start drilling operations tied to the Apollo prospect in the Hoop area. The company is not allowed to drill into oil-bearing layers until the complaint from Greenpeace has been dealt with by the ministry. Statoil respects the right for legal protests and believes it is important with a democratic debate on the oil and industry.

The well found thinner than expected oil-bearing sands of reservoir quality at two intervals in the Lower Cretaceous target horizons and was not tested for production. It was drilled to a vertical depth of 4,157 metres below sea level and will be permanently abandoned. “While the result of T-Rex is disappointing, we have gathered a large amount of data that we will analyse to understand the wider implications and decide on further activities in the license,” said Morten Jeppesen, Managing Director of Maersk Oil in Norway. The well is the first to be drilled in the license, which was awarded in the APA Licencing Round in 2006. Maersk Oil took over operatorship in 2009. “Drilling operations in the Norwegian Sea this winter have been very demanding due to extreme weather conditions.

Eni and Sonangol announce a new major oil discovery in Block 15/06, located offshore Angola. The Cabaça South East-1 well, located at a depth of 470 meters, at a distance of 100 km from the coast, successfully reached its multi-target objective in the deepest levels of Miocene age, where oil bearing reservoirs, with a total of 450 meters of gross thickness, have been proven. Initial evaluations indicate that the discovery holds  material volumes of oil in place of high quality. Cabaça South East-1 is the seventh of eight expected exploration wells within the contractual commitments of the license. The well has produced results beyond initial expectations and confirms the potential for a second productive hub in the North East area of the block.

StatoilHydro has completed the drilling of an exploration well on the Nucula discovery, which is located around 110 kilometres east-northeast of the Goliat discovery in the Barents Sea. The purpose of exploration well 7125/4-2 in the StatoilHydro-operated production licence 393 was to delineate the Nucula oil and gas discovery from early 2007, and to explore another segment of the structure. The well confirmed a small oil column in sandstone of the Triassic age. The oil-bearing layers were thin, but showed good production properties. It is too early to reach a conclusion on the size of Nucula.

Four European oil firms are reportedly negotiating with Cuba to carry out deep-water exploration of the island's Gulf of Mexico waters, and at least two are likely to sign contracts early next year, Cuban oil officials were reported as saying. In a separate development, Brazil's state oil firm Petrobras had also started drilling an exploration well in north-central Cuban coastal waters whose results will be announced in January or February. The exploration efforts formed part of a strategic program by Cuba's communist government to boost domestic oil and gas production and so reduce costly oil imports, whose high prices this year have badly strained Havana's stretched finances. Dr.