Operational Update – Completion of drilling in KUN-202 and commencement of drilling KUN-203 in Mengo-Kundji-Bindi, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville)
Panoro Energy ASA ("PEN", OSE ticker code), the independent oil and gas company with assets in West Africa and Brazil is pleased to announce the completion of drilling operations in the KUN-202 well and the commencement of drilling in the KUN-203 well in Mengo-Kundji-Bindi ("MKB").
The KUN-202 well was the second of up to six wells to be drilled in this new drilling campaign. The well was directionally drilled to a location 1.45 km southeast of the Kundji-200 drilling platform and encountered the top reservoir of the Kundji field on prognosis at 1,875 meters measured depth (1,280 meters vertical depth). The well was drilled to a final depth of 2,366 meters measured depth, which included coring approximately 36 meters of the reservoir, before running logs and installing a 7” casing across the reservoir. The logs confirm that the reservoir is oil-saturated over a gross vertical interval of 129 meters. A further 46 meters of Mengo Sandstone was encountered with lower resistivities and correlates with a similar interval in well KUN-2, drilled in 1991 by Elf 2.6 km to the northeast of the KUN-202 location. This lower interval in the KUN-202 was assumed to be water bearing in the pre-drill volumetrics estimates and the logs are consistent with this expectation. Drilling operations were completed ahead of plan.
Based on the good drilling efficiency recently demonstrated, it was decided to immediately skid the rig and commence drilling the KUN-203 well before returning to complete and hydraulically fracture the KUN-201 and KUN-202 wells for production purposes. The KUN-203 was recently spudded and will be a vertical well targeting a reservoir location directly below the Kundji-200 drilling platform. Drilling operations are expected to take around 25 to 30 days.
CEO Kjetil Solbrække commented, “We are pleased with the continued progress in this current drilling campaign and the initial results from the KUN-202 well logs. The core we have recovered will be analysed going forward and we expect this to provide valuable information for optimising the recovery of oil from this very large oilfield. We look forward to the results from the KUN-203 well before we commence completion operations on the suspended wells”.
The MKB permit is a 700 km2 license onshore in the Republic of Congo. The Mengo, Kundji and Bindi fields contain light (32° API) oil in low permeability Lower Cretaceous sandstone reservoirs and had a total of six producing wells drilled by Elf in the 1980's and 1990's. The permit was reissued to Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (“SNPC”) and partners in 2009. Panoro Energy holds 20% in the license.
For further information, please contact:
Jonas Gamre, Finance & Investor Relations Manager
Tel: +47 23 01 10 02
Cell: +47 971 18 292
Email: jonas.gamre@panoroenergy.com