No oil discovery after Staatsolie’s six-well campaign off Suriname

Suriname’s national oil company Staatsolie has completed its Nearshore Drilling Project in the country, which consisted of six wells, but failed to make a commercial oil discovery. 

Staatsolie said earlier this week that it had drilled six exploration wells as part of its nearshore drilling campaign. While no commercial oil discovery was made, valuable data was collected, the company stated.

The campaign started at the beginning of April this year, using the Seadrill-owned West Castor jack-up drilling rig, which will now be demobilized.

Initially, there were ten wells planned, with the probability of finding oil being between 10% and 27% with estimated extractable quantities of oil between 65 and 800 million barrels. Based on seismic data, forecasts were made and these wells were determined. Due to operational obstacles and the insights during the program, four wells were removed of the program.

Six wells, Marai, Electric Ray, Kankantrie, Powisi, Gonini, and Tukunari were drilled during this project. The total depths of the wells varied from 1,000 to 3,000 meter in water depths from 8 to 25 meter. Of the six wells drilled, four had oil shows confirming the potential of oil in our coastal area.

The nearshore area has a size of 12,000 km2. According to the company, limited data is available from this area because hardly any exploration has been done. Therefore, Staatsolie believes it is important to continue exploring this area. Now that well data has been collected, the seismic data can be associated with this specific information, Staatsolie explained.

In related news, oil and gas company Apache has recently decided to drill even deeper at its first exploratory well in Block 58 offshore Suriname. The new target depth of the well is approximately 6,900 meters.

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