Afren strikes black gold at Okoro East
By Sarah Modlock | Tue, 17/01/2012 - 15:45
Afren (AFR) shares jumped as it kicked off its 2012 oil campaign with a new discovery.
The company said its Okoro East exploration well, in its core producing area, offshore south east Nigeria, encountered 549 feet true vertical thickness of net oil pay and 41 feet of net gas pay in excellent-quality reservoir sands.
"The proximity of Okoro East to the existing producing Okoro field means that we are well positioned to efficiently monetise this discovery, both in terms of our detailed understanding of the subsurface and proximity to existing infrastructure," said Osman Shahenshah, Afren's chief executive.
He said the well also opens up additional prospectivity on the block. "With the JS-2 exploration well currently drilling ahead in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, we look forward next to spudding the Nunya-1x (Cuda-2) exploration well offshore Ghana later this month."
Okoro East was spudded on 18 December and reached a total measured depth of 8,751 feet (8,016 feet true vertical depth), with the Transocean Adriatic IX jack-up drilling rig. The well successfully encountered oil in the Tertiary reservoir sands equivalent to those that have been developed and are in production at the Okoro main field, in addition to the deeper, previously unexplored reservoirs.
The discovery of significant pay in the previously unexplored deeper zones opens up further prospectivity at similar levels on the main Okoro field and elsewhere on the block.
Analysts at Credit Suisse increased their target price for Afren stock by 14% to 148p on the news and maintained their 'outperform' rating. |
