SNE-2: First appraisal well starts drilling offshore Senegal

Located 100km offshore Senegal, the first appraisal well to be drilled on the SNE oil field has been spudded. The SNE-2 well will be drilled in approximately 1100 m of water and drilled to a TDVSS (total vertical depth subsea) of approximately 2770 m prior to an evaluation programme, which will include logging, coring and flow testing.

Three evaluation wells, SNE-2, SNE-3 and BEL-1, will be drilled back to back in a program that is estimated to be completed in mid-2016. Both SNE-2 and SNE-3 appraisal wells will be logged, cored and flow tested.

The aim of the appraisal program is to progress towards proving a minimum economic field size for the SNE discovery, which FAR estimates to be approximately 200 million barrels of oil. In addition, the BEL-1 well will drill the Bellatrix exploration prospect, which will evaluate the untested Buried Hills play. BEL1 will also appraise the northern portion of the SNE oil field (refer Figures 1, 2).

For reasons of operational efficiency, the top hole of SNE-3 was drilled prior to the spud of SNE-2 (to a depth of 1,750 metres) by the Ocean Rig Athena (refer ASX announcement 2 Nov 2015). Drilling of the SNE-2 well is expected to take approximately 5 weeks after which the logging and flow testing program will commence. On completion of the operations on SNE-2, SNE-3 will be re-entered and drilling and evaluation will be carried out on SNE-3 before commencement of the BEL-1 well.

FAR and its joint venture partners will be operating a tight hole policy, and therefore FAR does not anticipate making any further announcements regarding the drilling program until the SNE-2 well has reached TDVSS.

Edited from press release by Angharad Lock

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/offshore-and-subsea/05112015/sne-2-first-appraisal-well-starts-drilling-offshore-senegal-1556/