Offshore Namibia's First Drill – Oil Not Found

First well of Chariot's 4 or 5 offshore well drill programme, Tapir South, off the coast of Namibia found no commercial hydrocarbons

The share price of African focused oil and gas exploration company, Chariot this week took a major tumble after the explorer announced that it had found no oil off the Namibian coast, according to an All Africa news report.

Chariot's share price fell on Monday to a yearly low of 75 pounds upon confirmation that no commercial hydrocarbons were found in the Tapir South exploration well in Northern Block 1811A and the well will be plugged and abandoned.

The first well of Chariot's four to five well drill programme, Tapir South was rated as having a 25% chance of success and was targeting resource potential of some 604 million barrels of oil. But after reaching a total depth of 4 879 meters, the well was found to contain no commercial hydrocarbons despite the penetration of reservoirs that Chariot described as "excellent".

Although disappointed, Chariot CEO Paul Welch said that analyses of the results from the Tapir well will provide invaluable information on its exploration activities going forward.

He said:"Whilst the results of the Tapir South well are disappointing, this is the first well of a longer term drilling campaign within a frontier region and only the second well ever to have been drilled in the Namibe basin. Our understanding of this basin is rapidly improving and we expect this well to provide more information on the character and maturity of the potential source rocks when we carry out detailed analyses on the recovered samples."

"These analyses will provide invaluable information for improving the assessment of source risk on other prospects in close proximity whilst also furthering our knowledge of the region."