Chariot revises drilling timeline

Chariot, the African focused oil and gas exploration company, has announced a revised prospective drilling programme for its local operations.
Following the disappointing results at its Tapir South well in Northern Block 1811A and the Kabeljou well, where no commercial hydrocarbons were found, Chariot announced last year that the next drilling programme was set for the second half of this year in the central blocks.
But this week, the oil and gas start up announced a revised drilling programme as part of its operational review. Chariot justified the revised drilling timetable saying it will help to further de-risk the drilling targets that the company will ultimately select.
In a statement on Tuesday, the company said: “We believe all our assets have the potential for giant discoveries, we have a focused strategy and we are committed to realising the value in the portfolio.”
As part of the revised programme, the Namibian Central Area partnering process will be initiated in the third quarter of this year with the aim of drilling with a partner in 2014. Chariot says its newly acquired 3,500km² of 3D seismic data in the central blocks has been interpreted and a total of 19 targets have been identified which fall into 13 prospect areas.
These new targets, the company adds, consist of multiple reservoir types – deep water canyon heads (analogous to those found offshore Ghana), channel and fan systems and shallow water reefs, shelf-edge carbonates and clastics. The reservoirs occur in two petroleum systems, one with potential hydrocarbon charge from deeper synrift source rocks and the other from shallower deep marine source rocks.
From these targets, 11 prospects are of interest and have gross mean unrisked potential resource estimates ranging from 160 million barrels to 1.1 billion barrels.
Chariot further announced that the partnering process in the Namibian Northern Area has been initiated with the aim of drilling with a partner also in 2014. The Zamba prospect is the priority target and has gross mean unrisked prospective resources estimated at 375 million barrels.
Analysis of the well data from Tapir South-1 has been completed, and although no commercial hydrocarbons were discovered and the well was plugged and abandoned, the proprietary information gained from this well has been beneficial, improving the company’s understanding of the hydrocarbon potential of the area.
As a result, the Zamba prospect is now a priority target while the Tapir trend has been removed from the prospect inventory. Zamba is interpreted to be a carbonate target overlain by salt and which is on trend with recent Angolan discoveries.
The company also announced that it has identified a new play in the Namibian Southern Area following the drilling of the Kabeljou-1 well. Maturing this play will require additional 3D seismic data, and an acquisition programme is planned for 2014.
However, the market did not respond positively to the revised programmed as the AIM listed company’s share price took another heaving beating to reach a new low of 20 pence on Thursday, tumbling from 30 pence a day before the announcement.