Kosmos gears up to drill three more wells off West Africa

Following a “major” gas discovery offshore Senegal earlier this year, the U.S. oil company Kosmos Energy plans to drill three more wells off Mauritania and Senegal in 2017, starting with Hippocampe well later this month. 

In the company’s 2Q 2017 conference call on Monday, talking about Kosmos’ plans offshore Mauritania and Senegal, Andrew G. Inglis, Kosmos chairman and chief executive officer, said that the company plans to drill three more high impact wells targeting super giant prospects, starting later this month.

Back in May, Kosmos made a “major gas discovery” in a Yakaar prospect offshore Senegal. The Yakaar-1 well is located in the Cayar Offshore Profond block approximately 95 kilometers northwest of Dakar. The well was drilled to a total depth of approximately 4,700 meters by the Atwood Achiever drillship.

Kosmos and BP each presently hold an effective 30% participating interest in the Cayar Offshore Profond license as a result of their respective ownership in Kosmos’ joint venture company, Kosmos BP Senegal Limited.

Yakaar-1 was the first well in a series of four independent tests of the basin floor fan fairways, outboard of the proven slope channel trend opened with the Tortue-1 discovery. The well intersected a gross hydrocarbon column of 120 meters (394 feet) in three pools within the primary Lower Cenomanian objective and encountered 45 meters (148 feet) of net pay.

After completion of operations on the Yakaar-1 well, the Atwood Achiever mobilized to the Tortue-1 well to conduct a drill stem test (DST) on the Tortue discovery.

Speaking about the company’s plans offshore Mauritania and Senegal, Inglis said the company remains focused on advancing the Tortue gas discovery, which remains on track for the Final Investment Decision (FID) in 2018 and first gas in 2021.

“We believe there is no better time for developing a project like Tortue,” Inglis said in the conference call.

The DST on the Tortue-1 well is expected to be  completed by the end of this month. “The purpose of the DST is to demonstrate reservoir performance, provide information that will enable us to optimize the number of wells and define process, design parameters critical to beginning the FEED process later this year,” said Inglis.

Beyond Tortue, the Yakaar-1 well marked the beginning of a multi-well program to test some of the largest prospects identified by the industry in the last several years.

Inglis said that the Yakaar results further de-risk the key play elements of the basin for fan fairway demonstrating that the play concept works. “This is a positive retreat for subsequent wells in our drilling program, which reside in a similar geologic setting.”

He continued: “We now have all of our acquired 3D in-house and the quality and potential of our prospectivity is growing as our seismic interpretation progresses. We’re also seeing previously identified prospects improving in definition as evidenced by the high level of calibration of our AVO to prospect structure across our next three tests.”

Three new wells by year-end 

Once the Tortue DST is completed, Kosmos plans to spud the Hippocampe well, located in Block C8 of Mauritania, around the end of August.

“Hippocampe is a good example of our prospects continuing to grow. We previously described Hippocampe as a prospect with a p-mean resource of over 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent or 12 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent. We now believe the potential in and adjacent to Hippocampe is significantly larger having received an integrated new seismic data into our analysis.”

After Hippocampe, Kosmos plans to drill the Lamantin in the fourth quarter, which is younger than Kosmos’ other prospects.

“We continue to view Lamantin as our best chance of finding black oil in the basin, given its location in the heart of the Cenomanian-Turonian, Albian source systems and estimate the p-mean resource size is 2 to 3 billion barrels equivalent.”

Finally, around the end of the year, Kosmos plans to drill the Requin Tigre in Senegal, which is the 60 tcf test of a large basin for fan, which the company believes is more gas prone given its proximity to Tortue and other results in Senegal.

Offshore Energy Today Staff