The Directors of Petrel Energy Limited (PRL) are pleased to announce that the final fitout and inspections of the new rig in Colorado and trucking of the rig and considerable ancillary equipment to Houston Harbour has been completed. The rig which arrived on schedule at the port of Houston late last week is currently being loaded in Houston Harbour for imminent departure. The rig and ancillary equipment is scheduled to arrive in Montevideo
in approximately 30 days. Additional updates will be provided upon arrival through to site preparations and spudding of the first well.
Managing Director, Mr David Casey, said “with the mud pump in Uruguay, the New Force rig fitout completed and rig being loaded we are excited for what the drilling programme, commencing in late April, holds. With multiple wells and multiple targets, the next few months are shaping up as a very exciting period for Petrel, our shareholders and stakeholders in Uruguay”.
He went on to say “that with essentially no onshore drilling activity for close to 40 years, getting to this point has been no small effort, with equipment for every conceivable outcome having to be shipped with the rig including completion and testing capabilities. It is a testament to New Force and SEI management that this has been achieved at all, let alone with only minimal delays, and we are looking forward to a successful drilling campaign over
the coming months.”
Petrel’s overarching vision for Uruguay is to drill four wells as cheaply as possible and cover as much of the concession area as possible while targeting multiple and different conventional exploration objectives within and across each well. More specifically the programme will seek to answer questions from the 2015 partner process such as:
- confirm source rock maturity, quality and extent
- confirm conventional reservoir quality and extent – Darcy permeability (>1000md) already measured in core samples 30km apart
- confirm migration and potential trap integrity - while not the primary objective 3 of the 4 wells are also targeting conventional structures for oil and gas trapped in either the same sequence or up-dip of oil shows and/or weeping core samples as well as provide new insights into the regional geology of this largely unknown sub-basin of the larger Parana Basin
- confirm validity of AVO anomalies identified on seismic
