Eco Atlantic confident despite another dry well

Toronto based oil and gas exploration start up, Eco Atlantic remains upbeat about the prospect of an oil find in Namibia despite the recent announcement by another oil and gas explorer, HRT that its second well in the Walvis Basin had found no oil.
Eco Atlantic CEO Gil Holzman said last week that despite the disappointing results of HRT’s Murombe- 1 well his company had gained valuable information on the basin and the geological structures of the region.
Holzaman said: “The results of the Murombe-1 well announced by HRT earlier in July was disappointing for HRT from a commercial perspective, however they provide valuable information on the basin and the geological structures of the region. The well reconfirmed the evidence of source rock which complements that which was established by the Wingat-1 well drilled in May. In that well, samples of high quality light sweet crude were recovered and a working petroleum system in the Walvis Basin was established.”
Early in July, Eco Atlantic was granted a one-year extension of its Exploration Phase of the Sharon and Guy licenses, extending the obligation period for both 3D seismic and drilling by a further 12 months into 2016.
Through its wholly-owned Namibian subsidiary, the company which listed on the local bourse last year, holds three offshore petroleum licenses and two onshore CBM and shale licenses.
Holzman said Eco Atlantic will continue with ongoing exploration during the extended term which comfortably allows the company sufficient time to work obligations.
“Our team continues to gather information from ongoing exploration work which is allowing us to further define our prospects and targets. We and the E&P industry are well aware of the statistics of early dry holes drilled in the major fields around the world in order to bring them on line. We are being very conservative in our budgetary moves at this early stage and remain confident in the prospectivity of our offshore Namibia licenses,” he said.
The statement from Eco Atlantic comes after HRT suffered yet another blow in its quest to find oil off the Namibian coast. On Friday 18 July 2013 HRT reported that the Murombe-1 well, the second offshore well in its exploratory drilling campaign had turned out to be a dry hole.
Although the well was dry, the results reconfirmed the presence of Aptian source rock in the oil window, which was also encountered during the drilling of the Wingat-1 well.
The Murombe-1 exploration well was drilled to a total depth of 5,729 meters with the objective of penetrating two targets. The primary target, Murombe, a Barremian Age turbidite fan system and a secondary target, the Baobab, a shallower Santonian Age structure were both penetrated. The average porosity was 19% and no reservoir was encountered.