Karoon comes up dry in Peruvian offshore well

Australia’s Karoon Gas has failed to find oil in the Marina‐1 exploration well, located in Block Z‐38 Tumbes Basin offshore Peru.

The well is being drilled using the Stena Forth drillship, which arrived in Peru in early January. It was spud in late January.

By February 17, the Marina well reached a depth of 1654m MD. Initial results from the shallower sections of the well were disappointing. Karoon continued drilling to reach the deeper primary targets.

In an update on Monday, Karoon Energy said that it had drilled down to a depth of 3021mm MD near the top of the Cardalitos Formation.

Mudlogging and LWD logging results from the Primary targets in the Tumbes Formation indicated that the well encountered thin water-bearing sands with no oil and only minor gas shows. Final logging is now being completed and Marina‐1 will be plugged and abandoned.

According to Karoon, Marina‐1 provided a large amount of valuable data on the geological setting for this region of the Tumbes Basin. Several potential reservoir sequences were encountered in the well, unfortunately, these sections were water wet and provide no prospectivity at this location.

The well results will now be thoroughly analysed, but no further drilling is planned in Block Z38 in this campaign, Karoon said.

Operationally the well has progressed to plan, on time and within budget, with no safety or environmental incidents. The total drilling operation is still estimated to take 30 days.

Karoon’s wholly-owned subsidiary, KEI (Peru Z‐38) Sucursal del Peru, owns a 40% operating equity interest in Block Z‐38 with Tullow Oil holding 35% and Pitkin Petroleum holding the remaining 25% equity interest.

Mark MacFarlane, Tullow Chief Operating Officer, commented: “This is the first ever well in the deep-water section of the under-explored Tumbes basin. We will now integrate the important well information with the seismic data that we are currently reprocessing and update our prospect inventory for blocks Z-38 and Z-64. Tullow is building an extensive exploration position in Peru and, while this result is not what we had hoped for, we remain positive about Peru’s wider offshore exploration potential.”