Gulf Keystone has announced the commencement of drilling operations on its Sheikh Adi-1 exploration well in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq. This is the first exploration well to be drilled on the Sheikh Adi Block immediately to the west of the companys Shaikan Block, the site of last years discovery of the giant Shaikan oil field.
Gulf Keystone has an 80 per cent working interest in the Block and is carrying the Kurdistan Regional Government's 20 per cent working interest.
The well design for Sheikh Adi-1 has been modified to drill through the geopressured sections of the Triassic. This high pressure interval forced the cessation of drilling on Shaikan-1, at the point when the well experienced the inflow of significant volumes of oil and gas from this section of the Triassic. The Sheikh Adi-1 is designed to drill through the Cretaceous, Jurassic and the Triassic age rocks, to a planned total depth, depending on well results, of 3,850 m. Drilling is expected to take six months. Gulf Keystone's estimated oil-in-place resource potential for the Sheikh Adi structure is in excess of one billion barrels.
