Australian oil and gas exploration company, FAR Limited (FAR), has selected their final well location for the upcoming Samo-1 well for their Gambian exploration program. This announcement follows the reprocessing and interpretation of 3D seismic data, detailed mapping of the Samo Prospect and detailed well engineering that has already occurred at the Samo-1 well location.
The Samo Prospect lies just south of the giant SNE oil field in Senegal, a trend which has so far seen nine successful exploration and appraisal wells (at 100 per cent success rate). FAR has stated that the Samo-1 well will be located in waters of around 1,017 metres depth and will be positioned approximately 112 kilometres offshore of Gambia, in the highly prospective Mauritania-Senegal Guinea-Bissau-Conakry (MSGBC) Basin.
The Samo Prospect has two main targets, one of which is an upper reservoir interval which contains liquid-rich gas at SNE and a lower reservoir interval which was oil-bearing at SNE. The two target reservoir intervals are assessed to have a combined Prospective Resource of 825 million barrels of oil.
Image courtesy of FAR Limited
FAR has announced that good quality reservoirs have been interpreted at both levels of the proposed Samo-1 well location and the well will be drilled on the crest of the structure.
The Samo-1 well is planned to ‘spud’ in early Q4 2018 and is expected to take approximately 40 days to drill. It will form the first well drilled offshore of Gambia in 40 years. The well will be drilled using the Stena DrillMax, which is a dual mast, dynamically positioned, deepwater drill ship with a rig crew that has extensive international and regional West African experience.
“We are very excited to be drilling the Samo prospect, which is a large prospect along trend from the giant SNE oil field. Given the nine successful wells drilled on the shelf to date in Senegal and into the key reservoirs in the Samo prospect, the geological chance of success for drilling this prospect is high for a frontier exploration well,” commented FAR’s Managing Director, Cath Norman.
“FAR retains a 40 per cent working interest in the project and will be operating the well on behalf of the joint venture. If successful, Samo-1 will add significantly to the contingent resource base of FAR and has the potential to dwarf the value of FAR’s portfolio in Senegal,” Norman said.
More information on this project can be found here.
