Rockhopper Books 3D Seismic Shoot In North Falklands Basin
Rockhopper Exploration, which is named after the penguin colonies on the Falkland Islands, has signed up leading seismic contractor CGG Marine to shoot a 3D seismic survey over two of its licences, PL032 and PL0 33, in the North Falkland Basin. The 685 sq km survey is due to get underway in December and is designed to provide further data on a number of promising leads and prospects.
This is ex-Shell acreage and lies in the northern part of the North Falkland Basin. The licences were home to two wells during the much-anticipated Falkland Islands drilling campaign of 1998 which proved such a crushing blow for further exploration of these remote waters. Rockhopper is not alone in believing the explorers of 1998 turned their back on one of the last major untapped oil and gas provinces in the world: Desire Petroleum, Borders & Southern and Falklands Oil & Gas Limited are now seeking to prove up the prospectivity of this region.
Regulars at oilbarrel.coms conferences will be well acquainted with the Falkland Islands story as Falklands Oil & Gas Limited, which holds vast tracts of acreage in the untested waters to the south and east of the islands, has been a popular presenter at past events. Unlike FOGL, Rockhopper is focused on the North Falkland Basin. This has the advantage of providing the company with a database of useful seismic and well data to help unlock the geology the acreage. It also has a drawback: explorers in the North Falklands Basin are tainted by the overhang from the costly disappointments of 1998.
Yet as Rockhopper and others like to point out, the wells drilled in 1998 were far from a disaster. The North Falkland Basin stretches 250 km from north to south and the six wells drilled there all tested the same type of play concept. Of the six, only one failed to find any indication of oil and gas and that duster was never logged because the well collapsed. The most exciting well was Shells test of the Fitzroy structure which recovered live oil to the surface but with a prevailing oil price of US$10 per barrel there was little interest in pursuing an exploration campaign in such a high risk, high cost area.
With oil prices nudging US$70 per barrel, the economics of the south Atlantic look very different today. And the results from the 1998 exploration campaign, coupled with the millions spent by new players such as Rockhopper on new seismic and controlled source electromagnetic surveys (CSEM), have changed the geological understanding of the region.
Rockhopper now believes the 1998 explorers targeted the wrong play type. It plans to use the forthcoming 3D shoot to better define the zones where oil was recovered and gas detected in the two wells drilled in 1998. This information will be used to design a drilling programme that will target those zones and a different play type.
Rockhopper, which joined AIM in August 2005, owns 100 per cent of four offshore licences, covering 5,800 sq km of the North Falkland Basin. These are PL023, 024, 032 and 033. PL023 and PL024 are the most southerly in the North Falklands Basin. Rockhopper has conducted 2D data over the acreage and conducted CSEM over the promising J and K prospects.
This is a new technology designed to give a clearer indication about the presence of hydrocarbons in a structure. Prior to the CSEM survey, petroleum engineering consultant Scott Pickford put the chance of success on J at 19.4 per cent: a successful CSEM reading could double this figure.
Rockhopper also holds 7.5 per cent of Desire Petroleums licences, PL003 and PL004. These blocks contain some interest prospects - Scott Pickford puts the chance of success on the Anna prospect at 21.6 per cent and Desire plans a three-well drilling programme here. The timing of this, however, depends on Desire securing a suitable rig and this is proving problematic given the scarcity of suitable hardware and soaring day rates.
Given these delays, Rockhopper last year decided not to exercise an option to increase its equity in the Desire licences to 15 per cent it stressed the decision was no reflection on its view of the prospectivity of the acreage, pointing out that it farmed into the permits to gain early exposure to drilling, a carrot that was no longer on the table due to rig shortages.
This is a major problem for companies operating in the Falklands. In the current market, rigs are expensive and scarce. Whats more the remote location will ensure a hefty mobilisation and demobilisation fee (during the last drilling campaign it took the partners 74 days to tow a rig to the islands). FOGLs chief executive Tim Bushell, speaking at oilbarrel.coms May conference, put the likely mobilisation fee at US$30 million. He is keen for the explorers in the North and South Falkland Basins to join forces and co-ordinate their drilling plans in order put together a multi-well programme that will be tempting to a rig contractor and enable the companies to share rig and logistics costs.
Rockhoppers brokers Teather & Greenwood expect a shared six-well programme to cost around 50 million (US$94 million), with Rockhopper drilling two wells on its own acreage and participating in a further three as part of its Desire farm-in. This could see Rockhopper picking up around 40 per cent of the drilling bill, equivalent to around 20 million.
Against this, there is the potential of farming out some of its acreage, said the brokers in a research note. Recent transactions have focused around a two-for-one farm in, involving Rockhopper farming out half of its operated wells. The group would then be carried for most of its drilling programme and the cost would decline to 10 per cent of the total drilling bill.
This would be a far more comfortable level for most investors in a company of this size, even for those who enjoy the white-knuckle wildcat thrill afforded by a frontier explorer like Rockhopper.
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