Gulfsands Petroleum has announced that it has secured a drilling rig for its upcoming oil and gas exploration campaign in the Rharb Basin onshore Morocco
COFOR SAS, an international drilling contractor and subsidiary of France’s Vinci group of companies, will provide an onshore drilling unit suitable for the drilling of a minimum of nine exploration and development wells in the area.
According to Gulfsands, the drilling firm will be mobilising a rig to Morocco to commence drilling in early September 2013 of the first well in an initial five-well campaign. The initial drilling campaign is expected to take around four months to complete.
The 2014 campaign, consisting of at least another four wells to be drilled in the Rharb permit area, is scheduled to commence in Q2. The wells will be of similar depths to those in the first drilling campaign.
The Rharb drilling programme is likely to focus on a series of shallow gas anomalies identified in Miocene fans and channels sands at depths of 1,000 to 1,650 metres in a similar geologic setting to discoveries on adjacent permit areas, which are currently in commercial production using the substantial gas capture and distribution infrastructure in the area.
Drilling and completion of successful exploration wells on the Rharb permit areas is anticipated to take approximately 25 days for each well, with another seven days for rig movement between successive wells.
The estimated cost of each of these wells, depending on the depth, is likely to be from US$2.25mn to US$2.5mn, if successful.
Mahdi Sajjad, CEO of Gulfsands Petroleum, said, “We are pleased that the company has been able to begin its operations in Morocco soon after the acquisition of these assets, which was completed in mid-January 2013. We are now very focussed on making our Rharb drilling programme a success and we are targeting early commercialisation of the gas resources.”
In June 2013, the company contracted Romania’s Prospectiuni to undertake seismic programmes on each of the Rharb and Fes permit areas.
Sajjad added that the firm was planning to drill one and possibly a second well on the Fes permit area during 2014, using the data captured on the 2D seismic survey, which will be available by the end of 2013.
