Gulfsands Petroleum (LON:GPX) has made a new oil find near its existing production assets in Syria.
It also told investors that aggregate daily oil production, from Khurbet East and Yousefieh oilfileds, reached 20,800 barrels of oil per day (bopd). This representing a 21 percent increase over December 2009.
Gulfsands has now produced over 12.6 million barrels of oil from the two oilfields since they came online.
The company is developing two producing oilfields in Syria, Khurbet East and Yousefieh, as well as exploring the surrounding areas for new hydrocarbon resources. Its latest drilling success comes from the Twaiba-1 exploration well, which is about seven kilometres away from Khurbet East.
Twaiba-1 was drilled to 2,016 metres and it identified two net pay oil intervals within regionally productive Cretaceous aged reservoirs – the intervals are known as the Shiranish and the Massive formations.
Shiranish contains a net pay section of approximately 31 metres - from around 1,872 metres - it has average porosity of approximately 21 percent. The Massive formation, in Twaiba-1 contains a net reservoir section of about eight metres, with average porosity of 15 percent.
Gulfsands is planning a production test for Shiranish and an open hole stem test for the Massive formation.
"The results from the Twaiba exploration well are very encouraging, as the net pay identified on wire-line logs is in excess of that assumed in our own pre-drill ‘high case’ estimates of speculative reserves of 9 million barrels,” chief executive Ric Malcolm said.
“The forthcoming production test should provide additional valuable information required to understand the potential commercial significance of the hydrocarbons encountered in this sole risked well.”
He added: “The performance of the two producing fields, Khurbet East and Yousefieh, remains exceptional and we continue to identify opportunities to maximize the value of these assets."
According to preliminary indications the oil present at Twaiba may have lower API than that of the adjacent Khurbet East Field, but similar to that found in other fields in the immediate area.
Twaiba-1 will be suspended as a future production well, once testing operations are complete. Subsequently the drill rig will be moved to the location of the next well, Abu Ghazal-1.
As part of the comprehensive update, Gulfsands also revealed that another well in the programme had not been as successful as Twaiba-1.
The Zahraa-1 well was drilled to 2,450 metres and it also encountered the Shiranish formation, as well as the base of a Cretaceous aged section. However it was not able to obtain wire-line logs over the reservoir intervals due to very poor hole conditions, therefore it could not fully evaluate the drilled sections.
But Gulfsands did note that only minor oil and gas shows were observed whilst it drilled through the Cretaceous aged section.
Zahraa-1 has now been suspended. The newly obtained drilling data will be fully analysed before any more drilling on the Zahraa structure. The second rig will now move to the Khurbet East field, to the KHE-101 location.
Overall the two wells have an estimated net cost of US$2.3 million – with Twaiba-1 costing US$1 million and Zahraa-1 costing US$1.3 million.
Additionally, Gulfsands also highlighted that it has now completed the 1,060 square kilometre 2010 3D seismic survey.
The data acquired has been shipped for the processing and ‘fast track’ preliminary volumes are expected to be available for interpretation during the first quarter. The final results are expected in the second quarter.