Sudan: Lundin discovers oil at Thar Jath - Middle East Economic Digest, this week's issue
Sweden's Lundin Oil announced on 5 March the discovery of crude oil in Block 5-A of the Muglad basin. Drilling tests at a depth of 1,820 metres from the Thar Jath exploration well flowed at an encouraging rate of 4,260 barrels a day (b/d).
Appraisal drilling is planned to start after the sinking of a second discovery well at Jarayan, about 12 kilometres to the southeast of the Thar Jath find, The company plans for spudding to be completed by the end of March. "Thar Jath is not a small discovery but you need more than one well result before you can begin to assess the field's true potential," says a Lundin Oil official.
Block 5-A is operated by Lundin's wholly-owned local subsidiary Lundin Sudan, which has a 40.4 per cent stake, Malaysia's Petronas Carigali Overseas has 28.5 per cent, Austria's OMV (Sudan) Exploration 26.1 per cent and the state-owned Sudapet has a 5 per cent holding.
Thar Jath covers an area of 30 square kilometres and is adjacent to the prolific Unity and Heglig fields, some 800 kilometres southwest of Khartoum. The two fields produce 200,000 b/d and are operated by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), a consortium including Petronas Carigali, Canada's Talisman Energy, China National Petroleum Corporation and Sudapet. The government estimates reserves in the Heglig and Unity fields to be between 650 million-800 million barrels.
Production from Block 5-A is likely to be delivered into the existing 1,540-kilometre export pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The pipeline was completed by GNPOC in August 1999 and has capacity to carry 250,000 bid. Construction of new pump stations could expand this to a maximum of 450,000 bid as new production capacity becomes available.
"Any production from Block 5-A is likely to be tied to the existing pipeline infrastructure with the addition of more pump station facilities," says a Lundin Oil official. |
