First published on NEWSNOW April 11, 2013.
Spanish oil and gas company, Repsol could be months away from resuming drill operations offshore Guyana following the finalization of a new agreement with authorities.
An official at the country’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment told NEWSNOW on Thursday that drill operations could resume as early as 2014.
A new agreement between Guyana and Repsol should be finalized by the end of this year, the official said. At the moment, Repsol is conducting 3D seismic surveys offshore Guyana.
Drilling at the Repsol-operated Jaguar-1 well in the Georgetown Block was stopped in 2012 at a depth of 4,876 metres without reaching the primary objective.
The decision to stop drilling at this point was unanimously agreed by all partners based on safety criteria and was taken after reaching a point in the well where the pressure design limits for safe operations prevented further drilling to the main objective.
Jaguar-1 was a high pressure, high temperature well which was spudded in February 2012 using the Atwood Beacon rig. Whilst the primary Late Cretaceous objective was not reached, samples of light oil were successfully recovered from two Late Cretaceous turbidite sands above the primary objective. The well was originally planned to be drilled to a depth of 6,500 metres to test the Turonian geologic zone.
At the time, the partners to the Georgetown PPL were Repsol Exploración (15%), as operator, along with YPF Guyana (30%), Tullow Oil (30%) and CGX Resources (25%).
