Karoon Energy Ltd (Karoon) is pleased to announce the Stena Forth Drillship has commenced the drilling of the Marina-1 exploration well located in Block Z-38 Tumbes Basin, Peru. The wholly owned, Karoon subsidiary, KEI (Peru Z-38) Sucursal del Peru is the operator and has a 40% net interest in Block Z-38.
The drilling operation is estimated to take 30 days and shall drill to approximately 3000 metres subsea. The Stena Forth Drillship is a state-of-the-art drillship with an exceptional record of drilling wells worldwide, successfully and incident free. The Stena Forth was chosen because it meets and exceeds all engineering, health, safety and environmental requirements of Karoon, its joint venture partners together with the Peruvian government regulatory requirements.
The Marina prospect has a gross prospective resource best estimate of 256 million barrels of oil (net to Karoon 102 million barrels) as previously announced in the “Resources Update” dated 8th May 2018.* Marina Prospect, Block Z-38 Tumbes Basin Peru.
The Marina prospect comprises a large fault bounded structure with targets at multiple levels from 900m subsea to 3000m. The targets are in the Tertiary Pliocene La Cruz to Cardalitos formations.
The structures are well defined by 3D seismic. Nearby hydrocarbon seeps demonstrate that migrating hydrocarbons are present, supported by seismic AVO anomalies indicative of trapped oil at Marina.
Karoon’s wholly owned subsidiary, KEI (Peru Z-38) Sucursal del Peru, owns a 40% operating equity interest in the Blocks with Tullow Oil Limited (LSE:TLW)) holding 35% and Pitkin Petroleum holding the remaining 25% equity interest.
* Note the prospective resources were prepared as at 7 May 2018 on a probabilistic basis. These resource estimates were disclosed in Karoon’s 8 May 2018 ‘Resource Update’ announcement. Karoon is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the resource estimates and all material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning the estimates in the relevant market announcement continue to apply and have not materially changed.
* The estimated quantities of petroleum that may potentially be recovered by the application of a future development project relate to undiscovered accumulations. These estimates have both an associated risk of discovery and a risk of development. Further exploration, appraisal and evaluation is required to determine the existence of a significant quantity of potentially moveable hydrocarbons. There is no certainty that any portion of the prospective resource estimated will be discovered. If discovered, there is no certainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the prospective resources evaluated.
