The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission has been mandated to work with the consortium that drilled the Jaguar 1 exploratory oil well but later abandoned it due to the high pressures encountered, to achieve an early restart of drilling on the Georgetown Block.
Discussions have begun between the government and the consortium which is led by Repsol Exploracion S.A., the operator of the Georgetown Block, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment said in a statement. Government officials and representatives of Repsol and the consortium met on July 31 to discuss the preliminary outcomes of the project and potential future plans, it said.
The partners to the offshore Georgetown Block are Tullow Oil plc (30%), CGX Resources Inc (25%), YPF Guyana Ltd (30%) and Repsol Exploracion S.A. (15%).
On July 16, Repsol and its partners announced that its six-month drilling operation for the Jaguar-1 well was brought to an end without any commercial oil discovery because it was not safe to go deeper, but talks with government had already started on re-drilling with a new well-design.
It was the second offshore well this year that has come up dry but the partners signalled that light oil samples recovered hold “significant promise” while government said that the evidence of petroleum occurrences was encouraging to all parties.
The ministry’s statement on Saturday said that drilling of the Jaguar-1 well was stopped at a depth of 15,998 feet and the decision to plug and abandon was taken unanimously by all partners based on the high pressures encountered. “This decision to abandon the well was fully supported by the Government of Guyana.
While the well was planned as a High Pressure, High Temperature (HPHT) well, actual pressures observed were significantly higher than predicted and continuing to deepen the well would not have been within the well design parameters to contain these pressures,” the ministry said.
“The drilling of the well progressed to plan in the early stages, but high formation pressures found deeper dictated the plugging and abandonment of the well.
Abandonment was achieved as planned and subsequent monitoring of the site is also planned for the immediate future,” it added.
The statement said that Repsol and the consortium partners continue to evaluate all of the data gathered during the drilling of Jaguar-1 and shared preliminary findings with government, which included evidence of petroleum occurrences.
The officials indicated their future plans to determine the viability of reaching the primary objective of Jaguar 1, the statement said.
“Based on the now known pressures, a new well may be drillable to the primary and secondary targets deeper than 18,000 feet and as deep as 21,500 feet,” the ministry said.
