DNO International has announced it has been selected as a bidder for Yemen’s onshore Block 84 and has also entered into a farm-in agreement for Oman’s onshore Block 36
DNO Yemen said it has been awarded a 59.5 per cent participating interest, 70 per cent paying interest and operatorship of Yemen's Block 84, while Turkey-based Dogan Enerji Yatirimlari Sanayi ve Ticaret has been awarded a 25.5 per cent participating interest and a 30 per cent paying interest.
State-owned Yemen General Corporation for Oil and Gas will have a 15 per cent participating interest, DNO said.
The partners are expected to acquire a new 3D seismic system and drill two wells during the first exploration period.
Block 84, which covers a surface area of 731 sq km, is located in the Masila-Seiyun Basin adjacent to Block 14, where more than one billion barrels of oil have already been discovered. The company already holds interests in five onshore Yemen Blocks, two of which - Blocks 43 and 47 - are also located in the same basin.
The Block 36 farm-in agreement provides for the transfer of Allied Petroleum Exploration’s 75 per cent participating interest and 100 per cent paying interest to DNO Oman. The company will assume operatorship and acquisition of new 2D seismic data, along with the drilling of two oil exploration wells, company sources said.
The block is located in the Rub al Khali Basin and covers a surface area of more than 18,000 sq km. Two exploration wells previously drilled in the block have confirmed the presence of source rock in the basal Silurian hot shale, an organic-rich shale that has been responsible for the majority of the oil and gas fields discovered in the Middle East and North Africa.
Multiple stacked potential reservoir units have also been identified and mapped on the existing seismic data, comprising 10,000 km of 2D seismic data complemented by high-resolution gravity and aeromagnetic surveys.
Technical work to date suggests potential lead sizes in excess of 100mn barrels.
Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, executive chairman of DNO International, said, “Block 84 in Yemen and Block 36 in Oman expand our footprint in two core areas in which we have extensive subsurface knowledge and operating history.”
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