Kosmos Drills Third Dry Hole in a Row
After a spate of six major gas discoveries, US independent Kosmos – now partnered by BP – has drilled its third consecutive dry well offshore northwest Africa, after shifting the focus away from appraising gas toward exploring oil.
Kosmos said February 5 that its Requin Tigre-1 exploration well, in Senegal’s Saint Louis Offshore Profond block, drilled to 5,200 metres, “was fully tested but did not encounter hydrocarbons. Post-well analysis is currently ongoing to determine the reasons it was unsuccessful.” Kosmos though repeated that it “believes there is substantial remaining prospectivity in the company’s large acreage position.” It was fully carried [by BP] on the cost of the Requin Tigre well. Ownership of St Louis Offshore Profond is 30% Kosmos, 60% BP, 10% state Petrosen.
Kosmos CEO Andrew Inglis said that Requin Tigre was the last well in our second phase of exploration of the deepwater Cretaceous petroleum systems offshore Mauritania and Senegal targeting large basin floor fan structures. We have delivered one success, Yakaar, in four wells in this second phase program.”
He said that overall Kosmos’ discoveries to date of 40 trillion ft3 gross, at a net cost of $0.20/barrel of oil equivalent benefiting from the partner carry, had “created the potential for two world scale LNG hubs. We will rigorously evaluate our large inventory of prospects across Mauritania and Senegal ahead of the next phase of exploration offshore the two countries.” The drillship meanwhile will proceed as planned to test two oil prospects offshore Suriname commencing in early 2Q 2018.